Cancer Outcomes in the UK

Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath Excerpts

Tuesday 21st April 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Ramsey of Wall Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Patel, on securing this important debate. I declare my interest as a member of the General Medical Council.

Like many other noble Lords, my interest in this very important subject is personal. My father and older sister both died of lung cancer. My father became addicted to smoking back in the days when tobacco companies pretended that the products they were selling were not killers. By the time he showed symptoms, it was too late to operate on him, even though he was otherwise very fit and healthy. He died at the age of 66, only one year into his retirement. I was pregnant with my firstborn, so he never got to meet his grandchildren. I have spoken about my sister before in the House. She had profound and multiple learning and physical disabilities and lived for years in an NHS mental hospital, before she went into the community, where staff and patients were smoking everywhere. She may well have been a victim of passive smoking.

Given this background, noble Lords can see why I very much welcome today’s debate and the Government’s national care plan. My interest is also a professional one: I have had a nearly 20-year career as a non-executive in various NHS organisations in local, regional and national roles, including as chair of the Lambeth Primary Care Trust and Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, plus being on the board of UCLH in London.

I remember well the previous Labour Government’s efforts to tackle cancer. I became the chair of Lambeth Primary Care Trust during the period of the 2000 plan, which introduced national targets to speed up treatment: no more than a two-week wait from GP referral to diagnosis and no more than a month from diagnosis to treatment. Great progress was made. In 2005, even the always sceptical National Audit Office reported that:

“Substantial progress has been made in implementing the NHS Cancer Plan, with many targets in the Plan met … This should contribute to the downward trend in cancer mortality rates and continue to bring significant benefits to patients”.


That Labour Government were surely right to start with speeding up treatment. Once you know that someone may well have cancer, time is of the essence.

However, we all know that this is only one leg of a three-legged stool, with early diagnosis and prevention completing the set. Prevention of lung cancer is, of course, why the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, steered through the House so effectively by the Minister, is such an important piece of legislation. I have been hugely proud to support it, and I have spoken about it in this Room, as I know many others here have. It is too late for my father and sister, but it will save the lives of thousands of others. Early diagnosis of lung cancer is a key and enormously welcome commitment in this Labour Government’s new cancer plan.

It is not before time. It is shocking to learn that early diagnosis rates were flat for the best part of the past decade. It is little wonder that the Cancer Survival Group at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine reported last year that,

“the speed of improvement in the survival index for all cancers combined has slowed – it increased nearly three times faster in the early 2000s than in the early 2010s”,

placing us 21st out of 28 European countries when it comes to five-year lung cancer survival rates, for example.

However, early diagnosis rates have increased significantly in the past few years, and successful implementation of the National Cancer Plan for England will enable us to build on this welcome improvement, particularly when it comes to lung cancer. As the plan points out, lung cancer screening is already proving transformational. Critically, three-quarters of patients whose lung cancer has been diagnosed as a result of screening are at stage 1 or two, in contrast to fewer than one-third of those diagnosed outside the programme. That programme would probably have saved my father’s life. The most encouraging news is that it is tackling inequality too, as screening can be targeted to where it most needed. This is why the plan is able to point out that the use of lung cancer screening has helped to reduce the overall gap in cancer early diagnosis between the richest and poorest areas by one-quarter.

I am delighted to hear the commitment to complete the rollout of lung cancer screening within the next four years, meaning that

“meaning every eligible person in England will have received their first invitation for a check”

by 2030, with the intention that at least 23 cancers will be diagnosed earlier by 2035, potentially saving thousands of lives, and that,

“because smoking is a risk factor for other cancers, trials are under way to check whether ‘moving the scanner down’ may be a cost-effective way to look for other cancers when people are receiving lung cancer scans”.

Of course, writing these commitments down does not make them happen. Delivery is a hugely complex task, as others have referred to, requiring the hard work and commitment of huge numbers of dedicated people and the resources they need to succeed. Labour delivered well on its last cancer plan, and I very much look forward to it doing so again this time around.