Giving evidence to the committee on Tuesday, Action Radiotherapy chairwoman Prof Pat Price said that cancer treatment should have been prioritised and surgery should not have been stopped.
She added: “The main problem, obviously, is that cancer was not ring-fenced and prioritised as it should have been during the first wave.”
But Prof Price also said that just aiming to get back to pre-pandemic levels of care was not good enough and a radical plan was needed.
The consultant clinical oncologist added: “Back to normal is not OK, we went into this pandemic the lowest of the league in all the high-income countries, so our ambition is to get back to being the worst. We have got to do something, we have got to have a radical new plan.”
Prof Mike Griffin, the president of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, said that while the 15 years to 2019 had seen a 10% improvement in cancer survival, it was unlikely to continue over the next decade.
The committee was also told that there were doubts the health service would achieve an ambition to diagnose three-quarters of all cancers at stages 1 and 2 by 2029.
Prof Price added: “You don’t just diagnose the patients, you then have to treat them. Unless we get the treatment side, we are not going to make any improvement in survival.”
