SCOTLAND faces a “desperate situation” on cancer survival rates and urgently needs a national action plan to tackle it, a charity coalition has warned.

The call came on the publication of new figures showing that while 71 per cent of those diagnosed with cancer in Scotland lived beyond a year of their diagnosis, just 39 per cent of those diagnosed with a less survivable cancer — such as lung, liver, brain, oesophagus, pancreas or stomach — lived more than 12 months, the lowest rate in Britain.

The Less Survivable Cancer Taskforce Scotland (LSCTS) argues that the figures are not only driven by those cancers being diagnosed later but by researchers in the fields often finding themselves at the back of the queue for scarce funding.