HEALTH Secretary Alan Milburn yesterday pledged to make Britain's cancer and heart care the envy of the world.

The bold promise came as a report showed waiting times for cancer patients had been cut dramatically in some areas.

At Newcastle General Hospital to launch the £100m investment programme, Mr Milburn said the money would help place Britain at the forefront of treatment.

Despite the planned investment, the Darlington MP has admitted that it will take until 2008 for access to treatment for all types of cancer to compare with the best of Europe.

Mr Milburn unveiled a £87.5m boost for services over the next four years for tackling cancers of the stomach, pancreas and oesophagus.

The cash will be used on reducing the 18,000 deaths a year from these cancers by developing more specialist services.

Another £20m will be spent on equipment to detect and treat heart disease.

His visit coincided with a report that waiting times for cancer patients have been slashed in some areas as part of a national programme to improve services which has been running for a year.

If the progress is repeated when the programme is rolled out to the rest of the country from April, it could have a dramatic impact on waiting times.

The study, by the Cancer Services Collaborative, showed progress in 51 pilot projects in nine areas of England - including the North-East - where NHS staff and managers have introduced improvements.

The projects looked at patients with bowel, breast, lung, ovarian and prostate cancer.

In one of the improvements within the Northern Cancer Network, which covers north Durham, Newcastle and Sunderland, the results of blood tests for suspected ovarian cancer cases were ready within one week instead of three.

Mr Milburn was in Newcastle to open one of the first of 21 new linear accelerators - a £750,000 cancer treatment machine which will treat up to 50 extra patients a week.

Money for cancer care will be used to speed up access to ultrasound scans and endoscopies and improve the availability of cancer drugs.

Cash earmarked for coronary disease will provide more cholesterol testing machines, defibrillators for doctors' cars and electro-cardiograms and blood pressure monitors.

Mr Milburn said: "There is no greater priority for the health service than beating our country's biggest killers - cancer and heart disease.

"Decades of neglect left NHS cancer and heart services short of the investment they need - that failure is being reversed.

"I believe we are getting to the time when we can offer patients in this country the best cancer and coronary care in the world."

In a reference to the North-East's poor health record, he added that the money would be targeted at most needy areas.

For the first time, cancer and heart disease are both receiving top-up Lottery funding.

At the Labour Party conference last year, Mr Milburn promised that waiting times for all cancer treatments would be slashed to only one month by 2005 as part of the three-year NHS Cancer Plan.

But Professor Gordon McVie, of the Cancer Research Campaign, said the new study had shown "shockingly long" waits for cancer care in some areas.

"It has revealed some appalling baseline results which, not surprisingly, when people looked at them, could be improved," he said.

Shadow Health Secretary Dr Liam Fox, criticised the Government's "postcode lottery for drugs needed to treat cancer"