Former Wolves and England star Geoff Thomas has won government backing for his campaign to raise £20 million to help leukaemia patients.

The 43-year-old father-of-two, who was diagnosed with the disease five years ago, got the green light at a meeting with Health Secretary Alan Johnson.

The former midfielder wants to fund six world class treatment centres in the UK over the next five years to speed up both research into blood cancer and its treatment.

Mr Johnson said: “This is an important initiative which could enable leukaemia and blood cancer patients to get faster access to revolutionary new drug therapies.

“Geoff has displayed enormous courage in fighting his own battle with leukaemia and he is now using his knowledge of the illness to help other sufferers.”

Geoff, who lives in Bromsgrove and has already raised £1 million for leukaemia sufferers, said today: “This is a massive boost to our campaign and indicates that Government funding will be added to the money we are already raising from big business and private philanthropists.

“It takes the project to the next level and justifies all the hard work that has already been put in. At the moment researchers are working in isolation in the field scraping money together.

“I want a vehicle to ensure that everybody is pulling in the same direction at the same time.”

Geoff said doctors were confident that by 2015, with the right help, they can ensure blood cancer is no longer the death sentence it is now in many cases.

“Our job is to offer them that assistance by creating hundreds of jobs in the UK biotech industry and, most importantly, giving the chance of life to blood cancer patients,” he added.

The Geoff Thomas Foundation wants to fund early clinical trials of new blood cancer therapies at new specialist treatment centres in Oxford, Cambridge, Bart’s London, Nottingham, Manchester and Birmingham.

He explained: “I was one of the lucky ones. A bone marrow transplant from my sister Kaye saved my life. I am in remission and have two years to go until I have no more chance than anybody else of getting cancer again.

“I found the cyclist Lance Armstrong an inspiration in the way that he overcame cancer.

“That gave me the idea of riding the Tour de France course to raise money. It was very naive because I had lost four stone in weight and all my hair and looked like the archetypal skinny cancer sufferer. But the experience I had been through, and the people I had met during it, gave me the strength and spirit to have a go in 2005.”

The feat raised awareness of the disease and £170,000.