Money promised to improve cancer care has been “purloined” by NHS trusts to pay their debts, according to a report by the Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology.
About half of the sum delivered as part of the government's cancer plan—£280m ($400m; €450) of £570m—has disappeared into the health service without any noticeable benefit to patients, said the MPs.
The committee also questioned whether the government has kept its promise to match charitable spending on cancer research, dismissing as creative accounting the health department's claim to be spending £190m annually on research.
Ian Gibson, Labour MP for Norwich North and the committee's chairman, said the department had reached this figure by “rebadging” money already spent on cancer treatment or on research only distantly related to cancer.
The committee's report concludes: “We are not convinced that the £190 million which the government claims to be spending on cancer research is being spent on cancer research alone.”
The committee heard evidence from various cancer research organisations, as well as the national cancer director, Professor Mike Richards, who admitted having heard reports that some of the money provided under the cancer plan could have been spent on other things.
“The arrangement for next year is much stronger,” he told the committee.
In a statement issued later he said: “Ultimately it is up to the local NHS to decide how best to spend extra NHS investment. But we have made it very clear that this was allocated to health authorities to improve cancer services, and that is what we expect to see happen. They will need to account for this investment at the end of this financial year.”
The committee's report concluded: “We are seriously concerned at the apparent ease with which trusts can redeploy such funds if they choose. We consider it dissembling to allocate funding to cancer care, with great publicity, without taking even the simplest precaution to ensure it reaches the intended areas.”
The MPs said their task of tracking the missing money had been made harder by “the attitude of the Department of Health to the provision of financial facts and figures,” which they described as “highly frustrating.”
• Women in Scotland with breast and ovarian cancer are waiting “unacceptably long” for certain treatments, says the first review of cancer services carried out by the Clinical Standards Board for Scotland.
No Scottish hospital was able to offer radiotherapy for breast cancer within the recommended period of four weeks after surgery, and concern was also expressed about delays in delivering chemotherapy.
The reports on breast and ovarian cancer found that the number of women in Scotland getting the best evidence based treatments is increasing.
The Clinical Standard Board's reports are available at www.clinicalstandards.org