Bowel Cancer Screening

Debate between Steve Brine and Nick Thomas-Symonds

Tuesday 1st May 2018 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Steve Brine)]

indicated assent.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I am grateful for that kind offer, Sir Roger. I am delighted to hear that we can continue for an extra six minutes.

The hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) is absolutely right. This is a cross-party issue. I believe that his predecessor spoke in favour of the system that he proposes, and the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) contacted me to draw attention to the debate that he led back in 2011. There is broad cross-party consensus for looking at the screening age and at more accurate screening methods, which I will come on to.

Participation rates remain an issue. We should send a very simple message to people: “Please do not ignore your bowel cancer screening kit, which could save your life.” There is no doubt that we must also do more to raise awareness of symptoms. Bowel cancer is often mistaken for other conditions, such as irritable bowel syndrome. That only reinforces the point that a number of hon. Members have made about the importance of highly accurate screening.

Previously, the standard screening test was considered to be the faecal occult blood test—the FOB test, as it is known—and all men and women between 60 and 74 received a home test kit, but that has been changing across the country. The best available test is now the faecal immunochemical test—the FIT—which can detect more cancers and can be set to different sensitivity levels, enabling any traces of human blood that are found to be investigated. The Royal College of Pathologists sent me a useful briefing, in which it indicates that it would expect a 45% increase in demand on pathology if the test were set at one level, but a 480% increase if it were set at a more sensitive level. That sensitivity level is important.

The Welsh Government are introducing the FIT from March 2019. I believe that it was due to be introduced in England in April. I hope that the Minister can update the House on when that will happen. I hope that there will be a decision for Northern Ireland soon. Of course, Scotland already screens people using the FIT at age 50.

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[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I am grateful to the Minister for his tone and constructive approach. May I press him for a little more detail? He said that FIT will be introduced in England in the autumn, but when will we get closer to a precise date?

[Steve Brine]

I cannot give the hon. Gentleman the precise date today, but I know of his and other Members’ interest in the matter, and as soon as I can give that date I will tweet it and tag him. I assure Members that I will let the House know as soon as I have the date, and I have a funny feeling that Members will be watching closely for that.

On lowering the age for screening, many right hon. and hon. Members and their constituents are concerned that the age at which we invite people for bowel screening should be 50 rather than 60. Such concern is sometimes driven by personal experience of the impact of cancer on families as well as on constituents. The hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) feels particularly strongly about the issue and has worked on it for a long time—I worked with him a lot during his first iteration as an MP, and it is good to see him in his second chapter. I thank him and his constituent Lauren Backler, who sadly lost her mum to bowel cancer, for personally delivering to my Department last week a petition on the screening age with, as he said, 400,000-plus signatures. I was in my constituency; otherwise, I would have come down and got it myself. I saw him on “ITV News Meridian”, our local news, walking up Victoria Street with the petition. I thank him for that and will take great note of the petition. We will, of course, consider it carefully and respond in due course, but I hope what I will say today will give him some cause for optimism.

When the bowel cancer programme was introduced in 2006, it focused in the first instance on those aged 60 to 69, and then in 2010 it was extended to 70 to 74-year-olds. When we consider that eight in 10 cases are in over-60s, we can understand why that was the starting point, but that does not have to be the end point. It is therefore crucial that the clinician looking at the bowel following a finding of blood in a stool is as skilled an expert as possible, and the NHS has to make sure there is enough clinical capacity to follow up referrals.

The hon. Member for Torfaen rightly mentioned NHS England capacity, which is critical. To boost clinical capacity in the NHS in England, Health Education England has recently pledged to fund the training of 400 clinical endoscopists by 2021, which will significantly increase the endoscopy capacity in England and is a key part of the jigsaw.

This decision to screen from the age of 60 was also based on the fact that, as I have said, the risk of bowel cancer increases with age and people in their 60s are found to be most likely to complete a testing kit. However, that does not have to be the end of the conversation. Therefore, five years ago, in 2013, we started to introduce bowel scope screening for those aged 55. In the research that underpinned that decision, those who took up the offer of a bowel scope test and follow-on treatment reduced their chances of dying from bowel cancer by more than 40%. Those are good stats. Now, with the introduction of FIT, we have an important, evidence-supported opportunity to consider the totality of the bowel cancer screening programme and maximise the benefits of bowel cancer screening.

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[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

One of the issues with the scope test is its geographical spread: as I understand it, at the moment only about half of England is covered. First, will the Minister comment on when it will be extended? Secondly, I would welcome his commitment to reviewing screening in its totality.

[Steve Brine]

I will indeed ask the question that the hon. Gentleman raises about geographical spread. It is a key point.

I am pleased to say that the UK National Screening Committee is now considering how to optimise bowel cancer screening using those two evidence-based testing methods, namely bowel scope screening and FIT. It will advise on the optimal strategy—the hon. Gentleman rightly used that term—for England, this summer. To inform that advice, it ran a consultation, which ended on 9 April. That focused on whether the current evidence supports a change to the current tests approved for use in bowel screening programmes. In particular, it considered whether an optimal bowel screening programme should use both BSS and FIT. Both those screening methods require significant numbers of highly trained people and significant amounts of hospital resources in the NHS. With the introduction of FIT, it is therefore timely to carry out further work to decide the best combination of tests for the English programme; that includes the issue of sensitivity. I know that there is a lot of debate in the clinical community about the range and the number of people affected. We must get that right.

I am pleased that as part of its deliberations, UKNSC will also consider the most appropriate age at which FIT screening will start. It would be wrong of me, however, to pre-empt its recommendations or, as the hon. Member for Eastbourne said, to announce an exclusive from Westminster Hall. However, it is being considered and Ministers, including the Secretary of State, take a close interest. That is as clear as I can be. We are clear that recommendations must be achievable, so the availability of high-quality follow-on tests—colonoscopy and pathology—will be central to ensuring that we can turn the benefits of a better test into thousands fewer people getting and dying from bowel cancer. I am asking NHS England to consider that carefully. It knows of my clear interest in the matter.

I am thankful that survival rates are improving year on year, with about 60% of bowel cancer patients now surviving for five years or more, compared with about 25% 40 years ago. That is a significant change. As hon. Members have said, early diagnosis is vital—for all cancers, but certainly for bowel cancer—which is why the independent cancer taskforce included driving a national ambition to achieve earlier diagnosis among its six strategic priorities in the cancer strategy for England, which I am passionate about implementing. We remain on track to deliver that priority and to deliver every one of the 96 recommendations in the strategy by 2021. We are, of course, thinking about post-2021 as part of the long-term vision for the NHS, which the Prime Minister spoke about at the Liaison Committee recently.

We hope that the introduction of FIT as the primary test in the bowel cancer screening programme later this year will further enhance the drive towards early diagnosis and ensure that we catch more cases of bowel cancer early and allow for better treatment outcomes.

Pompe Disease

Debate between Steve Brine and Nick Thomas-Symonds

Tuesday 31st October 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Steve Brine)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) on securing this debate. I often think this about Adjournment debates, but this shows how excellent the House of Commons is in that it can debate a Finance Bill and then discuss a condition like Pompe disease.

I read the hon. Gentleman’s article in The Times this morning. The article was well written, and it set out very clearly the heart-breaking impact that this disease has had on his constituent’s health. I am sure his constituent appreciates very much the way he has taken up the issue. Well done for getting an article in The Times!

I hope my response will go some way to reassuring the hon. Gentleman and his constituent that the importance of understanding how to recognise and treat rare diseases such as Pompe disease is increasingly recognised by policy makers and healthcare service providers, not just in England but across the UK and internationally.

The hon. Gentleman spoke movingly about the subject, and he is of course right to praise the army of carers in our country. Carers Week is a big deal in my constituency, as I am sure it is in his, and he is absolutely right to praise the work of Muscular Dystrophy UK. When I was a Back-Bench MP, I was a member of the all-party parliamentary group on muscular dystrophy, which was chaired by a now former Member. Having grown up with friends who suffered with muscular dystrophy, and who ultimately lost their fight, I have a lot of time and respect for Muscular Dystrophy UK.

The number of rare disease patients can be very small. For example, Pompe disease has an estimated prevalence of one in every 40,000 births, but collectively some 3.5 million people in the UK alone are affected by what we term, in policy terms, rare diseases. To put this in context, one in 17 people will therefore suffer from a rare disease at some point in their lives. As we have heard, patients with Pompe disease are deficient in or completely lacking the activity of an enzyme that affects the ability of cells to degrade glycogen, causing its build-up in the body cells, which impairs their ability to function normally. Pompe disease often affects neonates—newborn children—and becomes apparent from within a few days to a few months after they have been born. Sadly, affected infants often require long periods in paediatric intensive care units, with many going on to require long-term mechanical ventilation, as the hon. Gentleman said.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I thank the Minister for that positive introduction to his speech. One issue that my constituent raised with me was that because this disease is genetic it can be picked up by a blood test from birth. He has asked whether such testing could be done on a more regular basis. I understand that this is difficult because the disease is so extraordinarily rare, but I flag it up for the Minister’s attention.

[Steve Brine]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, and I know my officials will be listening carefully to what he says. I may come to touch on that point, if I do not deal with it specifically, but I am sure he will remind me.

Some patients with Pompe disease are treated with an enzyme replacement therapy called Myozyme, which is a direct replacement of the missing enzyme via infusion therapy. Myozyme dramatically alters the natural history of the disease in infants, but many patients still require complex long-term follow-up, as the hon. Gentleman’s constituent does.

NHS England commissions its service for patients with Pompe disease from eight national centres; five of these are for adults and three are for children. The centres provide an inclusive, holistic, multi-disciplinary service—the point the hon. Gentleman rightly makes—for patients with lysosomal storage disorders. That is the wider term for these conditions, including Pompe disease. The centres provide rapid diagnosis, an assessment of disease burden, provision of disease-specific therapy, advice on symptom control and palliative care, where this is, sadly, necessary for patients with untreatable disorders. In conjunction with patient advocacy groups, the centres also provide support for affected families. We of course support these centres utterly—that point was put on the record so well, as usual, by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon).

As the hon. Member for Torfaen says, late-onset Pompe disease may not become apparent until later in childhood, adolescence or most commonly, as in the case of his constituent, Mr Foxwell, in adulthood. Although late-onset Pompe disease is usually milder than the infant forms of the condition, patients can experience progressive muscle weakness in the legs and trunk—the main body—and it can affect the muscles that control breathing, which is why the mechanical ventilation becomes necessary. As we have heard, as the condition progresses, breathing problems can become more serious and often prove fatal.

We know more can be done to diagnose rare conditions earlier. Currently, the average rare-disease patient consults five doctors, can receive up to three misdiagnoses and waits four years before receiving their final diagnosis. These delays in diagnosis often mean that opportunities for timely interventions can be missed and/or that patients may be given unsuitable or harmful treatments to treat their misdiagnosed condition; more than half of patients wait for more than one year after the first symptoms and some have waited over 20 years. Although not a great term, I am reliably informed that this is called a “diagnostic odyssey”, which causes uncertainty and distress for those affected, as well as considerable costs for health and social care budgets. We should remember that.

The 100,000 Genomes Project—

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

rose—

[Steve Brine]

I was going to touch on that project, but before I do I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman again.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way again. Before he moves on to the genomes project, I just wanted to touch on the issue of the diagnostic odyssey. My constituent’s diagnostic odyssey was seven years, and clearly although the symptoms, particularly the issue involving the diaphragm, were very apparent and were picked up, this was about making the link from there to the rare disease. Clearly, one always has to take into account statistical probabilities—there is no direct criticism of any medic or anything like that here—but part of trying to reduce that diagnostic time must be about increasing awareness among the medical profession of many of these rare diseases.

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[Steve Brine]

Yes, I absolutely agree. I also have ministerial responsibility for cancer—if only I had a pound for every time I heard early diagnosis mentioned in the office. I shall explain how I think the rare diseases strategy can help with that. Of course, it is important not just for rare diseases, but what the hon. Gentleman says is absolutely right.

The 100,000 Genomes Project addresses parts of the unmet diagnostic need I have described. It focuses on patients with a rare disease and their families and on patients with cancer. The sequencing of an individual’s genome is increasingly utilised as a diagnostic tool in cases where an individual has unrecognised signs and symptoms and to support the diagnosis of a rare disease. I am pleased to say that around 25% of patients whose genome is sequenced through the project now receive a diagnosis for the first time. In addition, despite their often chronic and progressive nature, the associated long-term complications of some rare diseases can be targeted and addressed early if they are diagnosed as such. That is clearly the holy grail. The UK rare diseases policy board has been tasked with looking at the diagnostic issues—the odyssey that I mentioned—and I look forward to it reporting its initial findings to me. I am told that they will come in early 2018, so I shall look out for them.

I assure the hon. Gentleman that the Government are and remain dedicated to improving the lives of all patients with rare diseases. The publication of the UK strategy for rare diseases in 2013 represented a significant milestone for all patients with rare diseases, and it is now being implemented throughout the country. The strategy set out our strategic vision and contains 51 commitments, concentrating on raising awareness, better diagnosis, which has been touched on, and patient care. It also has a strong emphasis on the importance of research in our quest to better understand and treat rare diseases. Research is so important. The Government are committed to implementing the strategy in full by 2020, and we know that the real test of success will be when patients and families affected by rare diseases experience real improvements.

The Minister of State, Department of Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne), announced in a 28 March Westminster Hall debate on the implementation of the strategy that NHS England will produce an implementation plan for the commitments in the strategy that it has lead responsibility for, and I shall hold NHS England to account ministerially. The Department of Health is now working collaboratively across stakeholders to produce the implementation plan for all those commitments that fall outside NHS England’s remit. Both NHS England and the Department are aligning the publication of those complementary plans, and I want them on my desk by the end of the year.

We appreciate the fact that any specific rare disease is, by its nature, very rare, so we should be honest about the fact that there is often a scarcity of patients and expertise in any single country. The diagnosis, treatment and management of rare diseases strongly benefit from cross-border collaboration. Through an EU initiative on patients’ rights in cross-border healthcare, European reference networks were set up throughout European countries earlier this year. These virtual networks act as centres of knowledge, skills and expertise in the field of rare diseases and complex conditions, and provide a platform to create partnerships between healthcare providers here in the UK and throughout Europe.

The UK is already a key player, leading six ERNs—more than any other member state—and participating in 23 of 24 networks, including what is known as the Metab ERN, which covers rare hereditary metabolic disorders such as Pompe disease. Six NHS trusts participate in the Metab ERN, which aims to ensure a joined-up approach to care by bringing together paediatric and adult metabolic physicians throughout the EU. That is really important. The ERNs are a cornerstone of the UK rare diseases strategy, and the Government are committed to ensuring that no patient should be put at a disadvantage through the UK’s exit from the EU—and that is a priority for me. Therefore, an important element of our future plan will be to continue to play a leading role in promoting and ensuring public health—I am also the Public Health Minister—both in Europe and around the world. Hopefully, that will further strengthen the long tradition of international collaboration, which our clinicians and scientific community have in this country, and often lead across Europe and the world.

Let me touch further on research. The full potential for improving our knowledge of rare diseases and our work towards better treatment and, hopefully, prevention can only be realised by continued research into rare diseases. That is why the National Institute for Health Research has established 20 biomedical research centres that develop new groundbreaking treatments, diagnostics and care for patients with a wide range of diseases.

The centres enrolled patients across 60 NHS trusts and, in partnership with Genomics England, led a pilot for the rare diseases element of the 100,000 Genomes Project that has delivered the sequencing of whole genomes of more than 12,000 bioresource participants.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

rose—

[Steve Brine]

I think that I can anticipate the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. Go for it.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

I am very grateful to the Minister for his generosity in giving way. My constituent has been unable to demonstrate the exceptionality required to access the treatment through an individual funding request. In reality, there is only this one standard treatment. One thing about the research into rare diseases that the Minister has referred to is the need to discover more options for treatment rather than having only one realistic one, as is the case so much of the time.

[Steve Brine]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. That is why I said that research is absolutely central to this. Let us be honest: this country has led the world in this field. We have an absolutely fantastic record and long may that continue, because people’s lives benefit and depend on that. Once again, he is spot on. Let me conclude my point. In 2016-17, the NHIR research infrastructure supported studies into Pompe disease across nine of its centres and facilities.

The hon. Gentleman referred to national variations in access to Myozyme treatment for Pompe disease across the UK. In England, NHS England funds this treatment for all patients, regardless of age or the form of the disease. In Scotland, the Scottish Medicines Consortium does not accept Myozyme for routine use, but it is funded for children and adults by its ultra-orphan drugs risk scheme. NHS Scotland also provides any patients with particularly complex needs access to highly specialised services in England. In Wales, I understand that the treatment is funded for children and adults with late onset of the juvenile form of the disease, but not the adult form where the symptoms are less severe.

As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, healthcare in Wales is a devolved matter, but I am sure that he will raise any concerns with the Welsh Government. I was delighted to hear about the setting up of Pompe Wales, which he talked about in his speech. It sounds really interesting. Obviously, it is in Wales, so perhaps he could send me details of it when it becomes available.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

The Minister is entirely right. It is commissioned in Wales for the infantile aspect. There is no general commissioning for late onset. There has to be what is called an individual patient funding request, where a patient has to demonstrate certain things, including exceptionality.

[Steve Brine]

The hon. Gentleman has put that clearly on the record.

Finally, it is worth noting that the rare disease landscape has been greatly transformed since the UK strategy was published in 2013, especially considering Brexit, the evolving legacy of the 100,000 Genomes Project and new emerging technologies such as genome editing. The recent independent chief medical officer’s report “Generation Genome”, which I said at Health questions was a landmark piece of work, and the “Life Sciences: Industrial Strategy” make it clear that genomics has an important role to play in future healthcare delivery, including the treatment of rare diseases. The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee is also currently engaged in an inquiry into genomics and genome editing in the NHS, and I look forward to seeing its report in due course. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we will harness the remarkable prospects that these new developments present for the benefit of our rare diseases patients. The NHS has always harnessed new technology to lead the world, and it will continue to do so in this field.

I thank the hon. Gentleman once again for highlighting these issues in this debate and in today’s media for his constituent and for all those who suffer from Pompe disease and other rare diseases. I hope that I have helped to reassure them a little that the Government and the NHS are working hard to tackle these conditions and to help to improve the lives of people suffering from Pompe disease and other rare diseases because, ultimately, that is what we are here for.

Question put and agreed to.