Cancer czar admits Britain's health service is spending half as much on cancer drugs as some other European countries

Britain's cancer czar admitted yesterday that the Health Service is spending around half as much per head on cancer drugs as some other European countries.

Professor Mike Richards, the national cancer director, said figures showed Britain spent £76 per head in a year compared with £143 in Germany and £121 in France.

Studies have linked the UK's limited access to cancer drugs and the length of time it takes to approve them for use to its appalling survival record for the disease.

Britain's cancer survival rates are the lowest among major Western European neighbours and are on a par with countries in Eastern Europe.

The data, from 2004, does not include private health spending on cancer drugs, which would bring the total up to between £90 and £100.

Yesterday, Professor Richards said health had been "historically less well funded" in the UK than in most other Western countries but a major investment had been made since 2000.

"This resulted in a rise in the proportion of the nation's wealth, or GDP (gross domestic product) going into healthcare," he told the European Breast Cancer Conference in Berlin.

"Now the gap is getting narrower and we are nearer the EU average."

But he acknowledged that the amount allocated to cancer was still lower than in similar countries.

Around five to six per cent of NHS expenditure goes on cancer, compared with seven per cent in France and nine per cent in Germany.

He said: "We have a lower spend on healthcare and spend less on cancer than these countries."

Professor Richards acknowledged that there had been low expenditure on cancer drugs, but said a major part of the poor prognosis for cancer sufferers had been late diagnosis.

Over the past year, the drug rationing body the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence had taken steps to speed up its approval process.

Cancer drug costs had risen by more than a quarter in the last three years and he predicted that costs would continue to rise.

"According to drug companies, over half of all new products in the pipeline are for cancer and that will drive future costs."

Cancer care would have to change so funding could be redistributed more effectively, he added.

The UK uses more hospital inpatient beds for cancer than many countries, including the U.S., and lengths of stay could be reduced.

Professor Richards warned: "We won't be able to afford everything so having robust and transparent data on the effectiveness of treatment is the best way forward."

Last year, it emerged that cancer treatment in the UK was so poor that survival rates were on a par with Eastern Europe.

A league table showed that British patients fared little better than those in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia.

Some 42 per cent of British men with cancer survive for more than five years, and 53 per cent of women.

Our record is worse than every other Western European country except Denmark.

The survey, by Italian cancer experts, found that although survival rates in the UK had gone up to an average of 48 per cent for both sexes, much of Europe was well ahead.

Britain's poor record has been blamed on drug rationing by NICE, which decides whether treatments are "cost effective" and whether the NHS should pay for them.

Last year, a Swedish study criticised Britain for the "low and slow" access to cancer drugs when compared with other countries.

It said thousands were dying unnecessarily because of delays by NICE, which can often take 18 months to decide whether the NHS should fund a drug.

It found that the leading countries for cancer drugs were Austria, France, Switzerland and the U.S.

Countries with a history of prescribing new drugs had the best five-year survival rates, the study found.

In the UK, around 153,000 deaths are caused by cancer each year.

There was a huge row in 2005 when some primary care trusts refused to give patients the breast cancer drug Herceptin, because NICE had not yet come up with guidance on whether it was cost effective.

Since the row, it has speeded up its procedures.