NHS: Cancer Treatments

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, I have known the noble Baroness, Lady Jowell, for over 40 years. We met as young women, trying to make our way in the Labour Party and change the world. I never dreamed that we would end up as ministerial colleagues at the Department of Health or, two decades later, as fellow Members of your Lordships’ House today. What does not surprise me is that my very dear friend has shown unfathomable fortitude and determination in her current illness, or that her enduring commitment to the public good has led her to scrutinise the care we provide to those who have various forms of cancer—particularly obdurate ones like her own—and to campaign for improvements in that care.

Following on from the words of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, I believe that the UK has tremendous opportunities to make progress, even given the formidable challenges that these cancers present in terms of timing, precision of diagnosis and the development and evaluation of effective treatments. If we are to make that progress across the spectrum of prevention, detection, treatment and cure, we have to collaborate internationally. I hope the Minister will have some words to say about the EU clinical trials regulation that we expect in 2019. We also have to exploit all the resources we have; that includes the NHS and its scientific goldmine of information, which my noble friend has already referred to. That is one resource. Another is the Cambridge Biomedical Campus; I declare my interest as a recent chair of Cambridge University Health Partners. At that campus, we have world-leading research institutes, such as the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cancer Research UK and the Wellcome Sanger Institute, just down the road. We have great NHS hospitals: Addenbrooke’s now, and Papworth to come. We have leading international pharmaceutical companies, including AstraZeneca and GSK; and, of course, we have the University of Cambridge itself. The opportunities are enormous if these players can collaborate effectively.

There are exciting plans, led by Professor Richard Gilbertson, a world-leading expert in brain cancers in children, to build on the already impressive results in, for example, breast cancer, by creating a ground-breaking institute for early detection and a new cancer research hospital, bringing patients speedy access to the latest research and treatments. I hope the Department of Health will see this not as another simple NHS building project but as a real opportunity within the context of the life sciences strategy.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jay, cannot be here today as she is abroad. She asked me to say how sad she was to miss this opportunity and to pay some words of tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Jowell. I think she would feel that the House has perhaps done her proud in paying that tribute. I started off by saying that, 40 years ago, Tessa wanted to change the world. The debate today illustrates clearly that her determination to do so is undiminished.