It comes as the health secretary called on experts and survivors to share their experiences to help shape the new National Cancer Plan. “From when you're diagnosed, what treatments you're offered, how you're supported, when we get it right we do it really brilliantly in this country, but there are so many people that are just falling through the gaps,” she said. “The people that do well are people with sharp elbows, and they are people who have a lot of resources available to them, so they're well supported, well educated, able to speak the language, look like the people who are treating them.”.

Wes Streeting, speaking at a Macmillan event to mark World Cancer Day on Tuesday, agreed people from diverse backgrounds needed better support in the cancer care system - but said “anti-whiteness” would not be tolerated. “You look at those outcomes, prostate cancer, black men twice as well inspired childbirth and in prostate cancer than white men, black women three times more lifestyle, childbirth than white women. We've got some real racial inequalities here,” he said, adding he needed the healthcare profession to help.

Mr Streeting said: “Sometimes there are some really daft things being done in the name of equality, diversity and inclusion which undermine the cause - for example, there was one member of NHS staff who was merrily tweeting a job ad online and saying part of her practice was anti-whiteness. “And I just thought, ‘What the hell does that say to the bloke up in Wigan who’s more likely to die earlier than his more affluent white counterparts down in London?’ We’ve got real issues of inequality that affect white working-class people.”.

Following US president Donald Trump’s recent criticisms of diversity and inclusion policies, the health secretary added: "We've got to deal with these challenges against the backdrop at the moment, let's be honest, where equality, diversity and inclusion is under a lot of spotlight and discussion.”. The health secretary said there was much work to be done to improve cancer care outcomes and the NHS more broadly.

“People can't get a GP appointment,” he said. “People are waiting far too long for elective treatment, we have not got the fundamentals right. “The retail politician in me would say what we need is the biggest revolution in the NHS history, and a huge shift from central to local, a big shift from hospital to community, from sickness to prevention, from analog to digital.”. Mr Streeting said he was confident Labour could fix it, as the last Labour government was able to deliver on its commitments to improving healthcare in the UK.