Free home care for cancer patients

The ambitious plans would see all 1.6 million people who have or have had cancer offered home visits by a personal nurse.

They are expected to be part of a wider drive to reform community healthcare, giving people the option of having chemotherapy, dialysis and palliative care under their own roof, rather than going into hospital.

Leading cancer charity Macmillan Support welcomed the plans, which are expected to be a key plank of Labour's general election campaign.

The proposals will be outlined in more detail in a speech today by Prime Minister Gordon Brown to the independent charity the King's Fund.

Labour says the shift in approach, introduced within the next five years, could save 2.7bn a year by improving the management of patients with long-term conditions, reducing hospital admissions and emergency incidents. The number of those with cancer and those who have survived the disease are growing each year as people live longer.

But opposition MPs challenged Ministers to say how they will pay for the estimated 100m cost and questioned whether the proposals were realistic or a pre-election 'bribe'.

Chief executive of Macmillan Cancer Support Ciaran Devane, which could help deliver the scheme, said specialist cancer nurses provided "invaluable care and support from the point of diagnosis, throughout treatment and after".

"They help patients understand the medical explanations they are given and about the treatment they are offered. They assess patients' progress and support them directly, and help them get the treatment, information and support they need.

"They also ensure the NHS puts the patient at the centre of their care, and adopts a joined up approach accordingly, whether its treating them at home, in the community or at hospital."

Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said, however, while he supported the principle the Prime Minister had to make clear what other schemes would be cut to fund the new initiative.

And Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb said with only months until an election the move "reeked of yet another desperate pre-election bribe by Labour."

The move is the latest announcement by the Government to improve the care of cancer sufferers.

Last September it announced that patients are to be given access to key diagnostic tests for cancer within two weeks of their GP expressing any doubt about their condition.

The move is expected to save up to 10,000 more lives a year in England and will help stop those with potentially mild symptoms falling through the gaps in the system.

Almost all patients are currently seen by a cancer specialist within two weeks unless they opt not to, according to data from the Department of Health.

But the move extended the right to all patients where a GP feels further tests are needed.

The plan is to quickly diagnose or exclude key cancers, particularly lung, bowel and ovarian cancers which account for more than a third of cancer deaths.