Andy Burnham MP, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, responding to a report from Cancer Research UK on how David Cameron’s NHS re-organisation brought confusion and a loss of leadership that is damaging cancer care, said:

“This report from one of the UK’s most respected charities makes devastating reading for David Cameron. The verdict from cancer experts is clear: David Cameron’s NHS re-organisation has damaged cancer care just as Labour always warned it would.

"After a decade of progress, cancer patients are waiting longer for tests and treatment. This is causing huge anxiety for thousands of families and the most frustrating thing of all is that the Prime Minister was explicitly warned that this would happen but he chose to ignore it. His reorganisation disrupted the successful cancer networks and, in the words of the report, left a "vacuum” on the cancer agenda. This explains why the NHS is now missing the national cancer standard for the first time.

“Cancer care has gone downhill under this Government and they have nobody but themselves to blame for that. David Cameron must urgently set out a convincing plan to halt the decline in cancer standards.”

Ends

Editor’s notes:

1. The most recent data from NHS England show that in the first six months of 2014, the NHS missed the target for 85% of cancer patients to begin treatment with 62 days of GP referral. It was missed in Q4 2013/14 and Q1 2014/15 - the first time since its introduction in 2009.
http://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/category/statistics/provider-waiting-cancer/
2. The report, ‘Measuring up? The health of NHS cancer services’, by the Health Services Management Centre at the University of Birmingham and ICF GHK Consulting for Cancer Research UK, says that:
“The set of contextual circumstances arising from the reforms […] were seen as hampering efforts to develop services and improve performance. Many interviewees spoke of a hiatus, with cancer services ‘standing still’ for the last two to three years.
"The major changes that have taken place in the structure of the NHS in England have led to a vacuum at a national level in terms of the leadership and support needed to drive the cancer agenda.
"The loss of the previous national infrastructure such as the National Cancer Action Team is reported as making people’s day-to-day jobs more difficult […]. The disbanding of dedicated cancer networks is seen as particularly problematic.
"The roles and responsibilities of the new NHS organisations are generally not well understood, leading to concerns around fragmentation in the commissioning of a patient pathway between different bodies. There is genuine confusion over who is accountable for decision making within the system.”