OUR concerns about the postcode lottery over cancer drugs are well documented.

We believe it is fundamentally wrong that one patient should be given a drug because they happen to live on one side of a geographical boundary, while another is denied the same treatment because they live on the other.

And whatever our economic difficulties, it is also wrong that Britain has for so long lagged behind other European countries in giving patients access to life-extending drugs.

Yesterday’s announcement that the Government is to make a £50m fund available for cancer treatments is a step forward. It will mean that some dying patients will get medicines which had previously been rejected by the NHS as being too expensive.

But big questions remain about the size and management of the fund.

With cancer drugs being so expensive, £50m will not go far and the Tories’ pre-election pledge that the pot would be £200m is now described as an “aspirational” figure.

And it is unclear who will have the final say on the spending of the fund.

Will it be regional clusters of doctors managing their own budgets, or the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice)?

Are we heading for a situation where a patient belonging to one group of doctors gets a drug, while another patient being treated by a neighbouring group is turned down?

We welcome the additional funding being made available to address some of the heartbreaking decisions being made. But we remain concerned that a health service, which is supposed to be ‘national’, is in danger of becoming more and more fragmented.