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I am always suspicious of making the case on financial growth statistics which are notoriously sensitive to the start year.

It would be more instructive to ask what has happened to the cost per QALY of cancer spend over the period, as we have approved more and more drugs at a higher cost.

If other programme areas have, at the margin, a lower Cost per QALY than cancer treatment currently has, we would save more lives by diverting resources to other areas.

Of course one action open to ministers is relatively simple - the spending on the CDF could be used to meet most of the recommendations of the task force overnight, such as upgrading Radiotherapy kit etc.