Cancer patients in the North East and North Yorkshire are losers in a "postcode lottery" that denies them life-saving drugs, a report revealed yesterday.

People in Teesside, South Durham and North Yorkshire are less likely to be prescribed recommended drugs for cancers of the breast, lung, pancreas, bowel and ovary.

Meanwhile, in North Durham and South Tyneside, patients are missing out on vital treatments for lymphoma, as well as cancers of the lung, breast, bowel and ovary.

Professor Mike Richards, the government's "cancer tsar", immediately branded the postcode prescribing revealed by his study as "unacceptable and unfair".

And ministers pledged to bring forward the introduction of electronic prescribing in hospitals to 2006 instead of 2008-10, to reveal patterns of low prescribing more quickly.

The report compared the rate of prescription of 14 different drugs by the cancer networks that cover England. All the drugs are recommended by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE).

Teeside, South Durham and North Yorkshire network prescribed five of the drugs less often, with only two prescribed more often. The remaining seven are broadly average.

Patients are missing out on gemcitabine (lung and pancreas), irinotecan (bowel), paclitaxel (breast, ovary and lung), trastuzumab (breast) and topotecan (ovary).

The Northern cancer network - which includes North Durham and South Tyneside - prescribes six of the drugs less often and four more often, with four in line with the average.

Patients are less likely to be given rituximab (lymphoma), docetaxel (breast and lung), oxaliplatin (bowel), trastuzumab (breast), pegulated liposomal doxorubicin hydroghloride (ovary) and topotecan (ovary).

Professor Richards said the postcode lottery existed not because of a lack of funding to buy the drugs, but because of a lack of pharmacists, or doctors, or perhaps a chemotherapy suite.

NICE recommendations are supposed to be binding on the NHS, but use of the drugs was "heavily dependent" on whether individual doctors believed them to be useful, he said.

The government said there had been major progress since 1996, with a ten per cent fall in the number of premature deaths from cancer.

But Lord Warner, a health minister, said a letter had been sent to local health chiefs explaining how NICE guidance could be better implemented.

He said: "It is clear from this report that the use of some cancer drugs varies unacceptably across the country. That is neither fair or acceptable."

Peter Cardy, chief executive of Macmillan Cancer Relief, said: "The government needs to do more to put an end to the postcode lottery for cancer patients. There is considerable anxiety among people."