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NHS White Paper

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend's work. He will have noted that I deliberately said both one-year and five-year cancer survival rates—he made an important point about that. Clearly, there are many specialist commissioning services, which will become the NHS commissioning board's responsibility. To that extent, GPs should not be expected to commission specialised services—they have little experience of that. However, GPs as commissioning consortiums, like primary care trusts at the moment, are capable of having a relationship with their cancer networks to establish the services that they need for their patients. Indeed, that applies more to GPs because many of the patients and those who work in cancer services to whom I speak are critical of the lack of awareness on the part of PCT commissioners of the available services. Those who work in cancer services do not believe that PCT commissioners understand the service that they provide. Not every GP understands every aspect of cancer care, but they are much better placed to work with cancer specialists to design the services.