Tory 'sleight of hand' over funding new cancer drugs

The party has vowed to give patients access to treatments that are licensed and widely available in Europe but have not been approved by Nice, the medicines advisory board.

The estimated 200m-a-year cost would be met by savings the NHS will make as an employer under Tory plans to scrap next year's National Insurance increase.

But the King's Fund think-tank claimed yesterday that the money would have to come from cuts elsewhere in the NHS budget.

Its chief economist, Professor John Appleby, said the Tories were apparently using cash that the NHS did not currently have.

"Of course that's not a real saving on today's budget," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"So the 200m or so they say will be needed to fund these cancer drugs essentially has to come out of the current budget.

"That means stopping doing something else for other people."

Prof Appleby said he found it "very hard" to see where the money was. "This is like making a saving on a tax that hasn't been implemented yet, so it's not particularly a cost that the NHS has to bear at the moment," he said.

"It's a sleight of hand to say the least because the money isn't there to be saved yet, so the money will have to come out of existing budgets."

He also said oncologists were divided over whether there should be wider access to certain cancer drugs, as the NHS had to make the best use of limited financial resources.

But Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said patients should have access to medicines their specialists felt they should be given.

"The medical view about what is best for patients should prevail," he said.

He insisted scrapping the National Insurance rise next April would save the NHS 200m or more a year, adding: "That money we will make available to meet the cost of the cancer drugs."

He went on: "Contrary to what John Appleby has said, we have been very clear we are going to protect the NHS budget, we are going to increase the budget each year in real terms, so within that budget from next year onwards the employers in the NHS don't have to spend 200m-plus on an increase in National Insurance, they will have that money available to meet other needs."

Health Secretary Andy Burnham said: "What we are seeing today is this misleading and poorly thought through announcement from the Tories unravelling.

"Again what we see from the Tories is a shallow attempt to grab headlines rather than tackle the real issues."