IT IS appalling that one in five cancer patients are being failed by the Oxfordshire Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust.

As we report today, only 79.6 per cent of patients are getting their first course of treatment within 62 days of being referred to the hospitals by their GPs.

The Government target is 85 per cent.

However, we have always taken the view that there is too much chasing of targets in our public services at the expense of getting things done.

In the case of cancer patients, both of these are being missed. And that, with a gleaming new cancer centre in Oxford, is just not good enough.

Our faith that the trust will be able to sort out this situation has been shaken by the lack of grasp it seemed to have on what the true figures were yesterday. It got itself tied up in knots trying to make the numbers tally.

Cancer is one of those diseases where speed is of the essence. Yet for every five people sat in a notional waiting room, one is being let down.

It is even worse when you look at prostate cancer, where the figure is one in four.

While treatment rates for breast cancer were near perfect, men are being given, in the words of sufferer Simon Lord, a “raw deal”.

Prostate cancer has long been in the publicity shadow of breast cancer and men are traditionally far more reserved in coming forward to get such problems checked out.

But when they have done, the hospitals that should be swinging into action to help them failed 35 men.

This is not an argument pitting breast cancer treatment against that for prostate cancer.

All these patients, no matter what type of cancer they are suffering from, deserve the best treatment available from what should be a world-class service.

But they are not getting it and that must change.