Miliband makes “one week cancer test” guarantee, as Labour’s NHS focus continues

Ed Miliband will continue his renewed focus on the NHS this weekend, by committing the party to guaranteeing NHS patients in England will wait no longer than one week for cancer tests and results by 2020. The pledge, made in an interview with the Times, is the first of a number of announcements based around the party’s “Time to care” budget unveiled in Miliband’s recent conference speech and forms a core part of Labour’s ten year plan for the NHS. This commitment will involve £750 million of new investment over five years, paid for through a mansion tax, cracking down on tax avoidance and a tax on tobacco firms.

This is intended as a first step towards achieving one-week access to key tests for all urgent diagnostics by 2025, with the initial aim being to match the best in Europe for cancer survival – saving 10,000 lives a year. Research also suggests that early diagnosis of cancer not only saves lives, but is also less costly to treat too.

Miliband told The Times:

“Labour has different priorities from this government. We would raise taxes on the most expensive homes worth over £2m 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…Now Labour is setting out the next stage of our NHS Plan: a guarantee that no-one will have to wait longer than one week for cancer tests and results by 2020. 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.”