UK Tory party pledges to provide expensive cancer drugs not backed by the NICE

Too many new cancer drugs - widely available in other European countries - are being turned down or restricted to small groups of National Health Service patients in England, the UK's opposition Conservative Party has claimed, ahead of a general election that has now been confirmed to take place on May 6. Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said doctors should have a greater role in deciding which drugs to prescribe.

The Party is calling for better deals with manufacturers to reduce prices. However, the government's medicines advisory body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), said it recommended drugs backed by clinical evidence, targeted at patients most likely to benefit.

The Conservative's leader, David Cameron, has said all patients with cancer should be offered life-extending medicines as long as the drugs have been recently licensed and are prescribed by their consultant - whether or not their use is backed by the NHS' rationing body. Tens of thousands of patients could benefit from drugs for breast, colon, kidney and lung cancer which are now routinely denied to them, even though the treatments which can extend lives by months and years.