Miliband: make tobacco firms pay for cancer guarantee
The Labour leader says he will guarantee a one week target for cancer tests, funded by a £150m-a-year tax on the tobacco giants.
Labour will guarantee a maximum wait of one week for the results of cancer tests by 2020, with plans to extend the seven-day guarantee for tests for other conditions by 2025.
The costs will be covered by £750 million raised over the five years of the next parliament by a new tax on tobacco companies, whose products, Mr Miliband said “cause so much ill health and suffering”.
The plan will focus at first on tests like chest x-rays for lung cancer, abdominal ultrasound for ovarian cancer, and endoscopy for bowel cancer.
The Labour leader told the Times: “It is critical that we improve early diagnosis of cancer – a killer disease that one in three of us will get – so that we can match the best countries in the world for surviving it.
“And this is a plan paid for by money raised from the profits of the tobacco firms whose products have done so much to cause cancer in the first place.”
Labour said waits for cancer tests were increasing, with the number of people waiting more than six weeks for key diagnostic procedures up from 1,900 in May 2010 to more than 10,600 in August this year.
According to figures from Cancer Research last month, 54 per cent of cancers were diagnosed early, at stages one or two. Labour wants the proportion to increase to two-thirds.
Party sources said early diagnosis could help save the NHS money in the long term. The average cost of treating stage one colon cancer is £3,373 compared to £12,519 at stage four, while ovarian cancer treated at stage one costs £5,328 and £15,081 at stage four.
Mr Miliband added: “Labour has different priorities from this Government. We would raise taxes on the most expensive homes worth over £2 million in our country, hedge funds which avoid paying their fair share, and the tobacco firms whose products cause so much ill-health and suffering.
“This money will help pay for the investments we will make with our NHS Time to Care Fund.
“And, unlike this Government, Labour has a plan for the NHS so that it can meet the challenges of the 21st century.
“We have already said we will guarantee GP appointments within 48 hours. And we have already shown how our Time to Care Fund will ensure the NHS has 20,000 more nurses, 8,000 GPs, 5,000 home care workers and 3,000 midwives so they have the time to care for you.”
Deborah Arnott, chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, said: “The tobacco industry is one of the most profitable industries in the world, and makes its money by selling an addictive product that it knows will kill half of all lifetime users.
“It’s absolutely right that they should pay more to put right the damage that they cause. Money from a levy on their profits should be used on evidence-based policies, not just to treat people who are already gravely ill from smoking-related disease, but to help people quit smoking before they get ill and to discourage young people from starting to smoke in the first place.”
Penny Woods, chief executive of the British Lung Foundation, said: “The tobacco industry continues to make enormous profits at the expense of the nation’s health and costs the UK 100,000 lives every year.
“Labour’s announcement to introduce a levy to help improve early diagnosis of cancer seems entirely appropriate and could prove to save thousands of lives.
“However, cancer isn’t the only killer and there is an urgent need to improve early diagnosis for all smoking-related diseases.”