Cancer patients across the Midlands face a postcode lottery over locally funded treatment, according to the Conservatives.

Figures released by shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley show an £8,000 difference between the region's best and worst primary care trusts.

They revealed Solihull to be one of the worst in Britain, spending just £6,405 per patient per year, compared with the Heart of Birmingham's £14,511.

The Tory analysis of Government figures revealed wide variations in the amount of money spent by different PCTs.

Patients living in Wolverhampton, 30 miles from Solihull, are allocated nearly 70 per cent more with an average of £10,797 spent on their cancer treatment.

Nationally the biggest variation was between Oxfordshire, where each cancer patient is allocated the equivalent of £5,182 a year, and Nottingham where the figure is £17,028.

Mr Lansley's findings come almost a year after former Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt vowed to review the existing Cancer Plan, after the The Birmingham Post Cancer 2020 campaign presented a 250,000 signature petition to Downing Street.

He said: "We have got a very skewed, ineffective cancer service here.

"We have got too limited preventative work, health inequalities are actually widening and yet we have got a skewed system where the elderly, who are suffering from cancer, don't find the services available to them."

With new treatments like Herceptin and Tarceva benefiting breast and lung cancer patients, researchers have warned the Government that therapies will be more expensive in future, and as such a strategy safeguarding the way they are funded is needed.

Across the Pan Birmingham Cancer Network a total of £6,031,684 was spent on treating cancer patients in 2004/05, significantly lower than the national average of £7,553,756.

This had risen by more than a third (33.4 per cent) by 2006/07, when PCTs spent a total of £8,050,154 - almost on a par with the average national spend of £8,166,992.

Cancer death rates in people under 75 fell by 17 per cent between 1996 and 2005, and the mortality gap is being reduced.

Steve Thomas, spokesman for HoB PCT, claimed there would "always be differences" in money trusts spend on treating the disease, depending on the type of cancer, when it is diagnosed and how invasive treatment will be.

He added: "This doesn't recognise the quality of care and it assumes spending a lot of money on cancer is a good thing, whereas some trusts like Solihull that spend less may be doing so because they have effective screening programmes in place."

Tony Ruffell, deputy director of redesign and commissioning for the Birmingham East and Northern (BEN) PCT, said: "Cancer continues to be a key priority for the trust and our annual spending on cancer care has risen each year for the last three years."

Richard Davidson, director of policy and public affairs at Cancer Research UK, was keen to highlight the amount spent was not an indicator of "treatment quality or access to individual drugs."

He said: "These figures do not take into account the type of cancer people in each region have, how long patients spend in hospital and the age of the population - all factors that would influence the amount an NHS trust needs to spend on cancer services.

"Reform of cancer services is vital if we are to prepare for the future challenges of cancer."

Last night a Department of Health spokeswoman said cancer would "remain a key priority for the Government".

She added: "We are delivering better treatment due to unprecedented levels of investment in cancer services. Our new Cancer Reform Strategy will build on the progress of the NHS cancer plan."