It’s a cancer plan worth welcoming, but only if it is delivered
After years without a clear national strategy, England now has a comprehensive National Cancer Plan. There is much to celebrate here, and it should have been the focus of national attention: a serious attempt to reset cancer care after years of poor outcomes and failing patients. Instead, much of the political oxygen on the day of its publication was consumed by the Mandelson fallout, a deeply concerning issue of the government’s own making. It is profoundly regrettable that this Labour failure has sidelined patients and pulled attention away from the urgent task of delivering the National Cancer Plan. I, as Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Primary Care and Cancer, will remain focused on what matters.
It is important to recognise that campaigning made its publication possible. My Liberal Democrat colleague Clive Jones MP has pressed for a national cancer strategy for over a year, and it is right that the government listened. Patients, clinicians, and charities have long called for clarity and direction, and after years in which cancer services were hollowed out by the former Conservative government, the existence of a plan itself certainly matters.
But plans do not treat patients.
Cancer touches every community. Earlier this week, to mark World Cancer Day, I partnered with the amazing Walk the Walk charity to host a gentle walk around my constituency. We were joined by so many wonderful people, each and every one of them a life touched by cancer in some way. One of my constituents, a mother in her early forties with a young family, attended a one-stop breast clinic on four separate occasions. It took two years for her cancer to be diagnosed. By the time it was, the disease was aggressive, requiring a mastectomy, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy. What she endured during those two years of uncertainty was painful and harrowing, made harder with the knowledge that it could have been avoidable had she not been failed by the current system.
This is the reality against which the National Cancer Plan must be measured. The government’s ambition, set out in the Plan, to meet all cancer waiting time standards by the end of this Parliament is welcome, but this ambition alone will not clear the backlog. Nearly 92 percent of NHS trusts responding to Liberal Democrat freedom of information requests recorded patients waiting more than six months for cancer treatment in 2025, three times the NHS standard. In Coventry and Warwickshire, one patient waited 673 days.
The uncomfortable truth is that England has slipped significantly behind comparable countries. Denmark offers a stark comparison. Two decades ago, Danish cancer outcomes were among the worst in Western Europe. Danish policymakers came to the UK to learn from our systems in cancer care. Following this, they introduced enforceable treatment timelines, invested consistently in diagnostics and workforce, and treated delays as a political failure rather than inevitably. Today, Denmark has surged ahead, while England sits near the bottom international league tables - survival rates are below Romania and Poland for some cancer types.
How did we allow this to happen?
Part of the answer lies in the quotidian acceptance of missed targets. In England, the 62- day standard from urgent referral to treatment has been broken consistently. In the new Plan, the government aims for 85 percent compliance by 2029. The Liberal Democrats believe that this is not enough, calling for every cancer patient to have a legal right to start treatment with 62 days, a guarantee written into law and backed by resources to deliver it. Cancer patients cannot afford aspirations that drift, and delays are just too costly.
The Plan rightly emphasises early diagnosis through digital diagnostics and innovation. But faster diagnosis will only translate into better outcomes if treatment capacity exists to meet it. Here, the Plan is less convincing. Funding has been announced for 28 new radiotherapy machines, falling drastically short of what is actually needed. Radiotherapy is one of the most cost-effective and successful treatments we have, yet England continues to suffer from “radiotherapy deserts” where patients travel long distances for care, with poorer outcomes as a result. The Liberal Democrats have called for 200 additional staffed machines and new centres in underserved communities, eliminating the postcode lottery that currently exists within cancer care.
There is much in the Plan to support, and I am grateful for the hope it will bring to cancer patients and their loved ones. But optimism must be matched with accountability. Without enforceable guarantees, sufficient funding and the workforce to deliver it, England risks falling further behind. Cancer patients have waited long enough, and this Plan will only matter if it delivers ambitious and real change, not just recycled promises.
Helen Maguire is a British Liberal Democrat politician and Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Primary Care and Cancer who has been Member of Parliament for Epsom and Ewell since 2024.
