The BBC analysis found just three trusts out of 121 were hitting the target.

Helen Maguire, primary care and cancer spokesperson, for the Liberal Democrats commented: ‘Liberal Democrats would write into law a guarantee for 100% of cancer patients to be treated within 62 days, backed by 200 new radiotherapy machines and thousands of extra nurses. Patients deserve nothing less.

‘Too many families lives are being shattered due to a broken system and the Government cannot waste anymore time by failing to act.'

The recent NHS medium term planning framework commits to improving performance against key cancer standards: maintaining performance against the 28-day Faster Diagnosis Standard at 80% and improving 31- and 62-day standards to 96% and 85% respectively.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: ‘Cancer care is a priority as we turn around more than a decade of neglect of our NHS.

‘We are working at pace to ensure patients get timely diagnoses and treatment - diagnosing or ruling out 135,000 more cancer cases this year, building more community diagnostic centres, offering evening and weekend appointments and spending £70m on new radiotherapy machines to get patients faster access to the tests, checks and scans they require.'