A CAMPAIGNER has welcomed a decision to strip the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) of its power to decide which drugs the NHS should fund.

The Department of Health said last week it would instead pass decisions to new GP-led commissioning consortia.

Clive Stone, cancer drug campaigner and Oxford Mail columnist, said: “It is about time we got this news. It makes us feel good because we have had to battle for drugs all this time.

“As if it isn’t bad enough getting diagnosed with cancer, we have trouble getting drugs we could have got in Romania.

“And it is all because they have been squashed by NICE, or because they have been taking too much time to appraise drugs.”

Mr Stone, who lives in Freeland, near Witney, added: “People were only given about three weeks to appeal by going onto a complicated website and trying to understand difficult statistics.

“We have all paid our taxes, so it is a relief to have these cancer drugs and see the Government acting quickly.

“It is expensive, but many of us have spent a lifetime paying our taxes and one in three of us will get cancer.”