As a cancer survivor, I have felt the mounting desperation of many during the pandemic. The Government’s sole focus on Covid left many of us untreated, with predictably tragic results. With my own scans having been delayed nearly a year, I can say with confidence that Sajid Javid’s promise to wage “a war on cancer” has come not a moment too soon. Is he doing what it takes to win this fight?

Among Mr Javid’s policies is a plan to boost capacity via cancer testing in shops and retail parks and mobilising the private sector. However, the problem has never just been about treatment capacity. It is about a decline in communications and personal relationships that together have turned people with cancer into victims of a bureaucratic culture, stranded in an unresponsive health system alone and with no-one to help.

The era of a dedicated family GP ended long before Covid. There is no-one who knows us: who trusts and believes when something’s not right, evident when my own bowel cancer symptoms were dismissed, leaving me waiting 15 months for treatment. Often, GPs can no longer help wrestle results from hospitals, nor champion us by making calls on our behalf. Rarely do GPs call during cancer treatment just to ask how you are.

While GPs are maligned, they too are trapped in a system that holds no value in good communication, honesty, or supportive relationships. The depth of the issue is evident from the fact that communication issues are endemic across hospitals, too, with unresponsiveness a key theme.

Even before Covid hit, accessing cancer treatment felt almost like a Harry Potter quest. I traipsed hospital halls in search of my surgeon, who, with Dumbledore’s enigmatic smile, flicked his magic wand and I was scheduled for surgery. Nowadays, the magic is gone. In its place is an endless, pointless round of phone calls and unhelpful letters.

I have made more than 20 calls to hospitals and spoken to receptionists, administrators, secretaries and nurses. Not one of them can schedule my cancer tests. The powerful people and doctors are kept far away from patient communication, and it’s always someone else’s responsibility.

During Covid, with families banned from bedsides, the vulnerable, scared and deeply unwell have been left with no-one to care or to fight on their behalf. Being left alone in an A&E corridor for hours with no pain relief, as I was in 2020, would not have happened if my partner had been there witness to it.

This may all seem hopeless, but it need not be. In Sajid Javid’s war on cancer, he needs to listen to those of us on the front line – the patients who know where the issues lie. For example, there is no mention in the Government’s latest initiative of continuity, building supportive relationships, better patient tools or “next step” discussions.

The latter are crucial to speedy diagnosis, yet my charity, Mission Remission, found that 65 per cent of cancer patients are not clearly instructed to return to their GP if symptoms don’t clear up. This ought to be so easy to solve.

It is ridiculous that I never talk about fighting cancer, always fighting NHS bureaucracy. It shouldn’t have to be that way.

Laura Fulcher is the founder of Mission Remission