Call to give UK cancer patients legal right to be treated within two months

Cancer patients should have the legal right to be treated within two months, even if that means the NHS has to pay for them to be treated privately or abroad, according to international experts.

Writing in the Lancet Oncology, they say cancer patients should have the legally enforceable entitlement to be treated within 62 days of an urgent referral by a GP.

This would bring the UK in line with Denmark, where cancer patients already have a statutory right to timely treatment.

International research shows that every four weeks of delay in cancer treatment increases the risk of death by up to 10%. But the NHS has not met its target for 85% of cancer patients to start treatment within 62 days since December 2015.

he authors argue that without legal rights in the UK, the government’s forthcoming national cancer plan risks being a paper exercise that will fail to get the UK off the bottom of cancer survival league tables.

“The concern is that the [cancer plan] will be a consensus plan to appease multiple stakeholders, rather than to provide radical, accountable, independent leadership,” the Lancet paper concludes.

Statutory rights to timely treatment would cut waiting lists and improve survival rates, the experts argue. Eduardo Pisani, a co-author of the paper and chief executive of All.Can, a global nonprofit that aims to improve cancer care efficiency, said: “International evidence shows that strong cancer plans, supported by legal rights, ensure patients have guaranteed access to timely, high-quality care. This protection promotes early treatment, reduces inequalities and ultimately improves health outcomes.”

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Source: The Guardian, 6 November 2025