People are simply living longer, and therefore more people will die of cancer as a result. Dr Law said there had been a huge increase in the numbers of women dying from lung cancer in recent years. Lung cancer is now the biggest cause of cancer death among women - even though deaths from the previous biggest killer, breast cancer had also risen. This was because women only started to smoke in significant numbers during the 1960s, and the effects of that take several decades to emerge fully. Deaths from breast cancer are thought to be linked in part to the modern trend to delay motherhood and to have less children.
Women also start to menstruate earlier and are going through the menopause later.
All of these factors increase the impact of the sexual hormones such as oestrogen, which is known to be linked to breast cancer. Education Dr Law said the best way to tackle cancer deaths was to educate the public about the risk of the disease. While the situation had begun to improve among women, men were still failing to seek medical advice soon enough. Another factor was the poor access that people in the UK had to top quality drugs, she said. These new figures show how important it is that we have drawn up, for the first time, a national cancer plan, providing a comprehensive strategy for tackling this growing disease and reinforces our commitment to improving cancer services.