Wouldn’t it be great if we could legislate in Parliament to save 10,000 lives a year in the UK – this year and every year into the future. Well we can and we intend to do so.

The Government’s “Target Cancer” campaign aims to save all of those lives and maybe more by backing a pledge to create a new NHS guarantee of cancer diagnosis within one week of GP referral, allowing patients to be tested and told their results in just seven days.

Some things are too important to be left to chance, and cancer is one of them. When I was first elected in 1997 lots of constituents visited my advice surgeries or stopped off at my street stalls to complain about long waiting lists and some cancer victims told me they had to wait ten weeks or more to see a consultant.

It's no exaggeration to say that with this disease, every day counts and cancer diagnosis should not be left to a local lottery. That’s why we are proud to say that with Labour, every NHS patient will have guaranteed access to diagnostic tests for cancer and crucially, their results, within just one week of seeing their doctor. If we do this, we know that up to 10,000 lives a year could be saved.

I find it incredible that the Tories are taking what looks like a dogmatic opposition to our two-week cancer pledge and it’s unbelievable that they can’t accept the simple truth that the quicker we can diagnose cancer, the quicker we can treat it and the more lives we can save.

In order to drive this message home we have launched the Target Cancer campaign at voteNHS.com. and we are encouraging people to sign up to our pledge.

VoteNHS.com will build on the success of campaigns like Ed’s Pledge, which gathered support from tens of thousands of people pushing for action on climate change, and Back the Ban, which saw 14,000 sign up in a single day to keep the hunting ban in place.

We are also launching an online campaign called “CameraON/ CameraOFF” to highlight the difference between the rhetoric and the reality of David Cameron’s Conservatives. But this week our message is on our cancer guarantees - David Cameron talks about how committed he is to NHS but what he doesn’t want people to see are the consequence of his policies. Simply put his proposals to scrap all targets would mean longer waiting lists, less care and poorer health outcomes.

Again and again I hear from people saying that they believe David Cameron is very good at saying whatever he thinks you want to hear. But you hear nothing from the Conservatives about what they would actually do. They keep their policies concealed.

We have challenged the Conservatives to reverse their policy of scrapping all NHS targets and patient guarantees, and to match Labour’s one-week cancer diagnosis guarantee and today I am asking everyone who agrees with me on this life and death issue to sign up to Labour’s Target Cancer campaign at voteNHS.com.