Minimally Invasive Cancer Therapies

Lord Kamall Excerpts

Thursday 24th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes an incredibly important point. It is not just in this area that we have shortages in specialisms. The Government are committed to creating a much better environment for resident doctors moving through the process into specialisms and to giving them support. There is a whole raft of work, which I cannot go into now, on how we can make sure that those programmes are smoother, speeded up and more equitably spread around the country—to pick up on the important point regarding this type of specialism.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My Lords, I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare. I pay tribute to him and wish him a happy retirement. Only yesterday, he managed to offload two single-use defibrillators on to me as part of his clear-out. I thank him for introducing me to the world of defibrillators.

In speaking to charities that represent those with less survivable cancers, I am told that one reason why they are less survivable is that they are spotted only at stage 3 or stage 4—quite often too late to survive. However, there are a number of tests which could spot some of those cancers; for example, I was told about a trial of a breathalyser test that could identify certain biomarkers and has huge potential. As the APPG on Less Survivable Cancers says, that early diagnosis could save thousands of lives a year. What is the department doing to ensure that trials of such tests that are promising are conducted as quickly and as widely as possible so they can be introduced sooner if they prove safe and appropriate to identify these cancers?

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

The noble Lord has identified an unexpected spin-off of being a Minister or shadow Minister in this place.

The noble Lord makes a very important point. The fundamental basis of the 10-year plan is how we move to earlier diagnosis, with the three shifts, including moving treatment into the community. I have had personal experience; for example, where men who have been shy about going to a GP with concerns about their breathing have been taken out the GP route and allowed to go straight to a local X-ray department, where early stages have been picked up. All those innovative means already being used need to be rolled out. That is why the 10-year strategy is focusing on early prevention, shifting services to the community and making sure that we free up space within the acute sector for specialist services.