'Cancer patient have the right to pay for their own drugs', says doctors' leader

'Can we justify spending billions of pounds on the relief of relatively minor conditions and deny patients with life-threatening disease the support of the NHS when they want to bridge the costs themselves?'

Lady Finlay's opposition to the Government's official line will pile the pressure on Health Secretary Alan Johnson

The crossbench peer is one of a growing number of influential medics to voice their opposition to the Government's insistence that cancer patients are not entitled to NHS care if they spend their own money on drugs that boost their chances of survival or give them a precious extra few months of life.

The drugs such as Sutent for kidney cancer, Avastin for bowel and breast cancer, and bowel cancer drug Erbitux have been judged to be both safe and effective.

But some have been deemed to expensive for widespread prescription, while others have yet to be evaluated for use on the NHS by the Government's drugs' rationing watchdog, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.

The Government says allowing cancer suffers to pay for some drugs while receiving others free would create a two-tier health service, with patients on the same ward being given different drugs depending on their ability to pay.

But critics say it is 'cruel and perverse' to stop people using their own money to better their health.

Writing in the Sunday Times, Lady Finlay, a professor of palliative medicine in Cardiff, said patients 'deserve to be allowed to help fund their care' -  and it is a doctor's duty to inform patients about the best available treatments.

She also argued that private and state-funded care already run side-by-side in many parts of the health service.

For instance, patients with complications from private surgery are often dealt with in the A&E department of the nearest NHS hospital.

Similarly, nursing home residents often part-fund their care.

Lady Finlay concluded: 'It cannot be beyond the wit of managers to ensure that those who fund their own treatments integrated with the NHS do so in a way that generates a small fund to be generated to subsidise patients who cannot pay but really would benefit from a drug that NHS does not fund.'

Bernard Ribeiro (CORR), president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said: 'I would strongly oppose the denial of life-saving operations to patients based on decisions they had made about how to supplement their NHS care.

Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb said: 'When a clinician recommends a proposed treatment as having a therapeutic value to the patient, it seems cruel and perverse to withdraw all NHS treatment if the patient follows that advice.'

Victims of the co-payment trap include Richard Eckley (CORR), a 68-year-old farmer, whose decision to pay for the kidney cancer drug Sutent is costing him more than £4,000 a month.

Mr Eckley, whose farm is near the Welsh border town of Hay-on-Wye is one of six patients launching legal action against the NHS for denying them the right to pay for extra drugs without having the rest of their treatment withdrawn.

Professor Jonathan Waxman, who treats cancer patients at London's Hammersmith Hospital, questioned the priorities of trusts that pay for expensive cosmetic surgery operations, such as breast reductions, but refuse to fund the latest cancer drugs.

Ian Beaumont, of the charity Bowel Cancer UK, said: 'To those who are dying, every second counts and if you're looking at treatments that can add months to your life, you can have time to get your affairs in order, say goodbye to your family, have that last Christmas.

'To have to fight for the right to have those few months and to have to spend your last month's fighting is too gruelling.

'What right does anyone, including the Primary Care Trusts, have to play God  with people's lives?'