“Figures to be released later this year are also expected to see further improvement. It must also be factored in that, as the Lancet mentions, the UK is one of the few countries to have good linkage between registration data and mortality data, allowing a more exact statistical picture of mortality rates.”

According to two separate reports, survival from childhood cancer up until 1997 was low compared with other European countries.

Although this is partly caused by the different ways that this data is collected, doctors believe that in some cases, care in the UK is simply not as good as elsewhere. For example, children in other countries are screened for a tumour known as neuroblastoma which can help spot the disease earlier.

In Britain – which has top-class cancer hospitals like the Royal Marsden – 30 per cent of children survive this disease compared with 46 per cent in countries such as Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Switzerland.

The  same is true of another type of cancer, Wilms’ tumour. While 83 per cent of children diagnosed in the UK survive, this is “significantly worse” than the 89 per cent who survive in northern and western Europe.

According to the report, this is because, up until recently, children in the UK were receiving different treatment from those elsewhere. “There­fore the possibility exists that children from the UK have been receiving sub-optimum first-line treat­ment or less-intensive salvage treat­ment at relapse,” Professor Craft said.

Although children in the UK are quickly referred to a specialist if the GP expects cancer, the fact that this country does not conduct routine screening of all children means the disease is less likely to be picked up.

In Germany for example, most children have their own paediatrician in primary care who can carry out scans to detect tumours such as Wilms’. In Germany, this picks up around one in three cases compared with only one in 10 in the UK.

Prof Craft said that although there are official guidelines for the treatment of children in the NHS, this does not go far enough.

Although still rare, child­hood cancer has slowly increased over the last three decades. Earlier data from 19 European countries shows it rose by 1 per cent a year for children, and 1.5 per cent a year for adolescents, between the Seventies and Nineties.

A combination of environmental and genetic factors are involved. A lack of exposure to infections and an increase in average birth weight are blamed, along with mixing of different populations. But some may be better diagnosis and record keeping.

Last night, Cancer Research UK said more research was needed. Professor Alex Markham, its senior medical adviser, said: “Today, five-year survival from childhood cancer in the UK has reached 77 per cent, and for some types of the disease survival is over 90 per cent.”