They said screening, new drugs and wider use of surgery had all helped boost survival rates. But they said even more women would live longer if the medicines watchdog speeded up the process of making new drugs widely available on the NHS.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has come under repeated fire for being too slow to assess and approve life-saving cancer drugs.
The researchers also called for an end to a 'postcode lottery' which means women in some parts of the UK are more likely to get new drugs and have better survival chances than patients living elsewhere.
Cancer Research UK released the breast cancer survival-rate figures yesterday which show changes over the past 30 years. Some 72 per cent of women diagnosed with the disease today can expect to survive at last ten years. And 64 per cent should live for 20 years or more.
Michel Coleman, of Cancer Research UK, said the figures were on the conservative side and it was possible that even more breast cancer patients would survive in future years.
"Women are more aware of their breasts and what goes wrong with them, and they are diagnosed earlier than they were ten or 15 years ago," he said.
Professor Tony Howell, a cancer expert at the Christie Hospital in Manchester, defended the UK's record. He said survival rates were going up here while in some other countries they were falling.
"We want to say to women that this is just an incident in their life and this is not going to kill you," he said. "Most women with a diagnosis of breast cancer will die from something else."
He also predicted survival rates in Britain would continue to rise through wider use of the drug Herceptin and other medicines called aromatase inhibitors.
In Derby only 5 per cent of patients get Herceptin compared with 90 per cent in Dorset. Dr Richard Sullivan, clinical director at Cancer Research UK, said the latest survival predictions were 'tremendous news' for breast cancer patients.
Dr Sarah Rawlings, of Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said: "This is great news for anyone whose life has been affected by a breast cancer diagnosis.
She was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago but yesterday she said she felt fitter than ever and paid tribute to the doctors and researchers whose work has helped keep her alive.
The retired administrator from Birmingham said: "My first reaction was that I would be dead by Christmas. But I discovered there is more out there for cancer patients than you can imagine."
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