Cancer Patient Experience

Debate between Albert Owen and Mark Durkan

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mark Durkan]

I fully accept the hon. Gentleman’s point. The point that I was about to make myself exactly “rhymes” with his observation. It is that these people are in a position to offer advice to others diagnosed with cancer; to offer advocacy to politicians, service providers and managers as to how things can be improved; and to offer real insight in administrative terms, by helping to future-manage such services and review them against the sort of yardsticks that other hon. Members have said they must be measured against.

I said that the radiotherapy unit now to be based at Altnagelvin, which will be funded on a cross-border basis in Ireland, is really a roll-out of part of the wider cancer strategy in Northern Ireland. A number of years ago, I served as Minister of Finance in Northern Ireland in the first Executive following the Good Friday agreement, and then as Deputy First Minister. One of the most important things I did was when we negotiated what was called a reinvestment and reform package, with new borrowing powers coming from Westminster but also a funding package that was to complement the infrastructure fund that we as the Executive had developed.

The first item that I was able to insist on with Tony Blair and then with the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown)—the two former Prime Ministers—was that funding should go to the regional cancer centre. It was meant to be a key part of the cancer strategy in Northern Ireland that was being led and advocated by Professor Paddy Johnston. We were able to fund that scheme, which was not coming forward and which did not seem to be breaking through in the Department of Health’s plans or budget submissions to me or to anybody else. We had been on the point of losing Paddy Johnston, who was going to go back to the United States, where he was going to be funded to do all sorts of things and use his skills.

However, as I say, we were able to create that cancer centre without going to a private finance initiative or anything else. Great work is being done there, not only for the patients it serves in Northern Ireland but because of the calibre of people it can attract and the clinical trials it can run, which are all part of improving the picture of cancer services throughout the United Kingdom.

As other hon. Members have said, staff at that centre and others are helping to work miracles every day with people who are suffering from cancer, but they are very conscious and very clear that their task is still to keep narrowing the gap between what the services ought to be and what they actually are, which is why we constantly need to drive on performance and outcomes in these areas.

Regarding the cancer experience, I am also very conscious of a constituent of mine who wrote a book a number of years ago, based on her experience, which basically says, “I have cancer but it doesn’t have me.” She is a lady called Kate Dooher and her book sets out very clearly her experience of a cancer journey and the implications for her family, colleagues and friends. Again, policy makers can get real insight from that about what the issues mean in real and practical terms.

I am a member of a number of the all-party groups on cancer, including all-party groups on different cancers, here in Parliament. Those groups can provide a platform for those with real insights, those who are providing care, those who are leading a lot of the professional fight against cancer and those who are driving the research platform. We should not underestimate the importance of either research or the linkage between good care networks and research. That is why Cancer Research UK is one of the most prominent advocates for more radiotherapy provision, because it believes that such provision not only makes services more accessible but that it is important in qualitative terms and in the research benefits that can come from improving services and treatment models in the future.

Going back to what the hon. Member for Hertsmere said, that is why, when we are talking about the patient experience, we very much have to listen to the patients themselves and base things not on what we think is the “nice fit, reasonable fit, just about cost-effective patient experience” but think in real and wholehearted terms about the patient experience.

Patients know how they have been able to improve their own experience for themselves, and they know how services whose staff might think they work do not really work for them, and how those services can be improved and modified. We need to gain their insight and emancipate their understanding as part of lighting the way forward for ourselves.

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

In calling Eric Ollerenshaw to speak, I remind Members that I will be calling the Front-Bench spokespersons at 10.40 am at the latest.