Parties unveil rival pledges to tackle cancer waiting lists

An uplift in radiotherapy treatment machines by 46 per cent could help "spare families the heartbreak of losing a loved one" to cancer, the Liberal Democrats have claimed.

- WILL DURRANT

Both Labour and the Lib Dems have set out their pledges to cut cancer waiting times if either or both are able to form a government after the general election on 4 July.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey, who lost both his parents to cancer, said he wanted to “end the tragedy of people losing their lives because cancer treatment took too long to start”. Labour shadow health secretary Wes Streeting, who recently received treatment for liver cancer, said “thousands of patients have waited too long for tests, scans and treatment”.

The Liberal Democrats have proposed a £1bn boost for radiotherapy equipment and claim an extra 200 machines would “put the NHS in England amongst the top of the league tables of the number of machines per million people”. It is part of the party’s pledge to introduce a legal guarantee that every cancer patient should receive treatment within 62 days of an urgent referral, and could reduce the distances that patients have to travel to access treatment.