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Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has announced £50m additional funding to help people access cancer drugs currently unavailable to them through the NHS because they are too expensive.

The move comes as national cancer director Professor Sir Mike Richards released a report on international variations in drug use. It shows the UK lags behind other European countries in innovative drug uptake.

The £50m will be allocated from October this year at regional level through strategic health authorities and be based on weighted capitation. It is an interim measure to help cancer patients get drugs in the period before the cancer drugs fund, introduced in the NHS White Paper Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS, is due to start in April 2011.

GPs will decide locally how the money is spent based on cancer specialist advice.

In an explanatory letter to local authorities NHS medical director Sir Bruce Keogh said the cancer drugs fund is a means of improving patient access to cancer drugs prior to the anticipated reform of arrangements for branded drug pricing from 2014. Final details of the fund will be confirmed after the autumn spending review.

Mr Lansley said: 'It's a scandal that we are strong in cancer research and participation in clinical trials in the UK, yet NHS patients aren't always seeing the benefits from the research swiftly enough.

'Patients should have access to innovative cancer drugs that can extend or improve their quality of life and which their doctors have recommended... This funding will help to ensure that this happens, and that we meet the needs of cancer patients immediately while we set about our longer term plans to change the way we pay for drugs so that patients get better access to medicines and the NHS gets better value for money.'

Hilary Tovey, policy manager at Cancer Research UK, said: 'Anything that helps patients get drugs faster is welcome. We know that the UK has a low uptake of new drugs compared to other countries, and hope that this new fund will help address this.'

International variations in drug usage

In his report  Extent and causes of international variations in drug usage cancer czar Professor Sir Mike Richards said there is no uniform pattern of drug usage across disease areas and categories of drugs for the 14 countries and 14 disease areas analysed.

France, Spain, the USA and Denmark have high levels of usage generally, but not across all disease areas. Generally lower than average levels of usage were observed in Norway and Sweden. New Zealand had the lowest ranking (14) in nine groupings.

The UK ranked relatively highly in three disease areas or drug categories (acute myocardial infarction, respiratory distress syndrome and statins) and a relatively low rank was seen in seven categories (cancer drugs launched within the past five years, cancer drugs launched more than 10 years ago, dementia, hepatitis C, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and second-generation antipsychotics). For the remaining four areas, an intermediate rank was observed (cancer hormones, cancer drugs launched between six and 10 years ago, osteoporosis and wet age-related macular degeneration).

When all disease areas are taken together, the UK ranks eighth out of the 14 countries. Variations also occur within categories, with the UK being a high user of some drugs and a low user of others.

Influences on drug use in the UK could include the impact of health technology assessment processes; the effectiveness of service planning, organisation and direction setting; and clinical culture.

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