At yesterday’s Britain Against Cancer conference, Shadow Secretary of State for Health Andy Burnham unveiled Labour’s latest policy initiative: a “Cancer Treatments Fund” to replace the current Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF).
In Burnham’s words:
“My goal is to make the NHS the best health service in the world for the treatment of cancer. We will only achieve that if we give patients access to the most effective forms of treatment, particularly advanced radiotherapy. The problem with cancer policy under the current government is that it prioritises one form of cancer treatment over others and places one group of patients ahead of another. This is indefensible when we know surgery and radiotherapy are responsible for nine in ten cases where cancer is cured. It is not right that 40,000 people every year who could benefit from radiotherapy are missing out.”
On the face of it, this is some fancy footwork by the Shadow SoS; he will please many patient groups and clinicians who have long felt the CDF’s pure focus on drugs was too restrictive, he neutralises the growing clamour from the Tories for a Labour commitment to back the CDF or scrap it, and he perhaps opens the door for an eventual absorption of the Fund back into normal commissioning. After all, the more the CDF covers, the less it can justifiably stand alone.
But it’s not that simple.
Firstly, the extra £50m a year pledged by Labour won’t go far – the CDF is already moving ahead to delist many drugs on its approved list to bring its overspend under control and no-one expects drugs to become cheaper in the next few years.
Secondly, it maintains the inequitable distinction between cancer and other conditions that would dearly love their own ring fenced fund.
And thirdly, the BBC is reporting that the money will supposedly be taken from the drug company rebates agreed in the last Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme (PPRS) negotiations, but this earmarking goes against the agreement that the rebate would be used to support frontline care.
The CDF was originally conceived as a way for the Conservatives to shut down access to cancer medicines as an election issue in 2010. It looks like Andy Burnham at least is keen to reignite that debate for 2015.