An urgent call from One Cancer Voice group

4 Actions the Government must take at this Comprehensive Spending Review:

• Deliver on the Government’s manifesto pledge to plan for the cancer workforce by providing a multi-year settlement to train and employ more cancer staff to fill current vacancies and ensure that the workforce has the capacity to meet increasing demand, innovate and drive lifesaving research. Around £200m additional investment in Health Education England is needed over the 3 years to grow the key cancer professions by 45% by 2029.
• Create a Cancer Nurse Fund of £124 million to train the next generation of Cancer Nurse Specialists, helping to deliver on the NHS Long-Term Plan promise for every patient to get a named cancer nurse.
•  Substantially invest to refresh and expand diagnostic equipment and radically reforming how diagnostic services are delivered. The Government must fully implement the recommendations of the 2020 Richards review of diagnostic services (including rolling out the Community Diagnostic Hub model in the 150 sites committed to across England in coming years) and invest the £1.3 billion in capital funding required to bring CT, MRI and PET-CT equipment capacity to the average across comparable OECD countries.
• Drive earlier and faster diagnosis by implementing the reforms proposed by the 2019 Richards screening review to maximise the benefits of national cancer screening programmes.

• People from more deprived areas are not only more likely to get cancer, they’re more likely to be diagnosed at a late stage for certain cancer types and have trouble accessing cancer services. And, sadly, they’re more likely to die from the disease.
• Smoking is the largest single preventable cause of cancer in the UK and prevalence remains higher in more deprived communities. The Government won’t achieve its Smokefree 2030 target until 7 years too late, if recent trends continue. This target needs to be backed by investment – a Smokefree Fund should be implemented to raise revenue from the tobacco industry to pay for measures to help people quit smoking.
• The 1-year cancer survival index for England shows that variation exists across Cancer Alliances – ranging from 72.1% to 76.7% for 2018. Targeting additional funding to level up this geographic inequality so that each Alliance achieves the same indexed survival as the best Cancer Alliance would contribute substantially to improving the rate of improvement in cancer survival.
• The Government must recognise and make progress on less survivable cancers as there is substantial variation in progress to refer, diagnose and treat different cancer types.

• Fulfil its commitment to increase annual public investment in R&D to £22 billion by 2024-25.
• Deliver on the cancer commitments in the Life Sciences Vision and Clinical Research Delivery Vision and increase multi-year funding for the underpinning health research infrastructure.
• Make cancer a top priority in the UK’s R&D portfolio and build a global cancer alliance to tackle the major challenges in cancer.

• Cancer care and follow up must be age appropriate and tailored according to unique needs – from children and young people to older people.
• The Government must work to achieve excellent psychosocial care in cancer alongside third sector organisations (aligning with the NHS Psychosocial Task and Finish group recommendations)
• The Government should publicly re-commit to its cancer care commitments in the NHS Long-Term plan of everyone getting the personalised care they need.