Cancer testing cut to fund NHS pay rises

THE NHS is to scale back plans to increase cancer testing in order to fund staff pay rises, as Britain’s top expert expresses concern that more cases could be missed.

Prof Sir Mike Richards said the plans could damage services that are already “woefully” underfunded. Writing in The Daily Telegraph, the head of the UK national screening committee, a former cancer tsar, said it was right NHS staff were properly rewarded. But added that funding for diagnostic capacity “must not be compromised” as a result.

Last week’s pay award of up to nine per cent comes as health services battle record backlogs. The number of patients waiting at least two months for cancer treatment, despite having been referred for urgent assessment, has doubled since the start of the pandemic.

Almost 27,000 patients thought to be at risk from the disease faced such waits at the end of May – up from around 13,000 in February 2020. Amanda Pritchard, the head of the NHS, this week told hospital bosses that almost nine in 10 people enduring such delays were waiting to have diagnostic tests.

Official figures noted that a record 157,317 people were waiting at least 13 weeks for tests – up from 6,371 before the pandemic – a 25-fold rise.

The NHS has drawn up plans for an expansion in testing, as part of its efforts to tackle Britain’s poor survival outcomes and catch up with Covid backlogs. But NHS England said last week’s pay award meant that it would have to scale back the plans and that would “regrettably” affect the “planned rollout of tech and diagnostic capacity across the health service”.

The action is being taken after the Treasury said it would fund NHS pay rises of up three per cent but any more would have to come out of existing health budgets. Health leaders say cuts of £1.8billion may have to be found mere months after the Government raised National Insurance 1.25 per cent to fund health and social care and have warned every additional 1 per cent spent on staff pay results in 500,000 fewer operations.

Sir Mike, an oncologist who spent 14 years as national cancer tsar, before becoming chief inspector of hospitals, said: “It is right that hardworking NHS staff, who have given the country so much, are rewarded for their efforts and it is welcome that the Government has accepted the pay review body’s recommendation. However, funding for diagnostic capacity must not be compromised – either now or in the future.

“It cannot be one or the other

– funding must be provided for both.” The leading oncologist added that the health service faced “vast” challenges and needed “radical reform”.

“Most observers would agree that the NHS is in a more parlous state than at any time in its history. However, I do not believe this needs to be terminal,” he said.

Sir Mike, who was national cancer director at the Department of Health from 1999 to 2013, spent four years as chief inspector of hospitals at the Care Quality Commission. This year he was appointed chairman of the UK National Screening Committee, which advises ministers on the rollout of programmes.

Last week ministers accepted the recommendations of independent pay review bodies that proposed pay rises of up to 9.3 per cent, saying they were needed to help mitigate the cost of living crisis. Doctors and nurses immediately threatened to go on strike, with unions saying the increases were a pay cut in real terms, as inflation was running at 11.7 per cent. Health officials this week wrote to hospital chief executives to urge them to take action to reduce the number of cancer patients waiting two months for diagnosis or treatment.

A letter sent by Amanda Pritchard, the chief executive of NHS England, and seen by The Telegraph, said reducing the 62-day backlog was “critically important” for patients and warned that 85 per cent of patients waiting more than two months were awaiting diagnostic tests. “Clinically, the speed of disease progression in many cases means that days really do matter, and we know that, for those patients who do not have cancer, every additional day kept waiting is a day of understandable stress and worry,” Ms Pritchard wrote.

The letter warns that around 14,000 additional patients with urgent cancer referrals face two-month waits, compared with before the pandemic.

Official figures show that 157,317 patients were waiting at least 13 weeks for tests in May, up from 6,371 in February 2020. The total number waiting for tests stood at 1.57 million, up from 1.08 million in February 2020.

More than two million tests were carried out in May, and a similar number were carried out before the pandemic. But the number facing long waits continues to grow as services struggle to catch up with the 50 per cent reduction in tests during the first lockdown because patients struggled to see GPS and hospital referrals were delayed.