The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, blocked a £5 billion plan for private hospitals to reduce the backlog in NHS waiting lists and unless the deal is extended people with cancer will die.

NHS hospitals will not be able to cope with the fast-growing backlog of patients that could grow up to 10 million by the end of the year.

The backlog in NHS waiting lists of over a million patients now waiting for more than four months for cancer treatment and the 60 per cent reduction in urgent referrals is a national disgrace, while The Treasury has given £1.8 billion of public money bailouts to four airlines (Easyjet, Wizz Air, British Airways and RyanAir) despite being one of the most polluting industries in the world and responsible for spreading the Coronavirus pandemic.

Since taking public money, the airlines have paid their shareholders while their workers went on furlough, announced huge redundancies and want to downgrade contracts to their existing staff.

Resuming air travel is likely to spread a second wave of the Coronavirus infections disrupting again cancer treatment and investigations of millions of patients as the NHS will not be able to cope with a second wave of Covid-19 and the winter crisis.

While the airlines are still lobbying The Treasury for a sector-wide bailout, cancer patients’ victims of the pandemic whose treatments and investigations have been cancelled not to overwhelm the NHS continue to wait in anguish unnecessarily.

Should the airlines receive billions of tax payers’ money while cancer patients are given early death sentences?

Jeannette Schael, Crookham Close, Tadley