Radiotherapy: Accessibility

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 18th July 2023 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Maria. I thank the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) for securing this important debate and for all her work on this issue, which is not a party political one. As we have found today, there is great consensus across the House on this cause, because it is the right thing to do to use our voices as Members of Parliament to champion it. I commend her and other hon. Members present for their work.

We have had a good debate. There has been a lot of repetition, because these issues need reinforcing, and I fear that I will be reinforcing some of the arguments that we have already heard. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) for all his work over a long time. He is always championing the cause of radiotherapy and bending the ear of shadow Ministers, and no doubt of Ministers, about its importance. I also commend the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) for his work as chair of the APPG for radiotherapy. He brings great knowledge to these debates.

This issue is close to my heart, too. As the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale said, all families are touched by cancer. Some have good experiences, where loved ones survive; others have less good experiences. I lost both my parents to cancer: my mum died from ovarian cancer when I was 19, and my dad died last year. In fact, last week was the first anniversary of his death. He lived to the age of 77. He had a very rare and aggressive form of rectal cancer; sadly, it could not be treated, because by the time even the earliest symptoms had been discovered, the cancer had already spread in various places throughout his body.

I will be forever grateful for the loving care that my dad received, principally from The Christie in Manchester, but also from the satellite at Oldham. He received palliative care, chemotherapy, immunotherapy and, indeed, radiotherapy. It gave him at least a year longer than he should have survived. My dad was a sporting man and a bit of a gambler, so he was willing to take those odds. Anyway, it gave him an extra year with his great-grandson, as well as with the rest of his family. That is precisely why radiotherapy is key. It was a game changer. The chemotherapy and the immunotherapy did not work; it was the radiotherapy that probably prolonged his life for those extra months.

As we know, radiotherapy is a key treatment for many people affected by cancer. It can be used to try to cure cancer completely, it can make other treatments more effective; it can reduce the risk of cancer coming back post surgery, and it can relieve symptoms in palliative care. Unfortunately, as we have heard today, radiotherapy services are under significant pressure, which is all too evident in the treatment statistics that have been cited. For example, the proportion of people in England having their first cancer treatment within two months of an urgent GP referral has fallen to 58.7%, which is down from 61% in April. As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Easington, the target is 85%, but that target has not been met on an annual basis since 2013-14. That really needs the Government’s urgent attention. We cannot just blame the pandemic for these statistics, because way before the pandemic the targets were not being met, although I am sure it exacerbated the issue and made the challenge even harder.

My first question to the Minister is what action he is taking to reverse this concerning decline in treatment within two months. We all know that the key to treating cancer is catching it early, but it seems that a significant number of patients are waiting far too long even to begin care, which potentially harms their chances of receiving successful treatment.

There are also serious concerns about technology and infrastructure within radiology services, as we have heard from hon. Members today. In a response to the Government’s long-overdue NHS workforce plan, the Royal College of Radiologists stated that

“we all know how frustrating it is to try and do our jobs with systems and infrastructure that simply aren’t fit for purpose.”

The RCR also cited an interview in which

“Tom Roques, Vice President for Clinical Oncology, talked…about needing to use seven passwords for seven separate systems in order to provide information to one patient”.

When the Opposition talk about embracing new technology and giving NHS staff the tools they need to do their job, that is precisely what we mean. We must embrace new technology. For example, there are tools that can map radiation therapy to cancer cells, avoiding organs more precisely and more quickly than a human can. That is standard technology in the United States of America, but is used by just one in three radiotherapy planning centres in England. Alongside the workforce plan, what is the Minister planning to do to address this problem? Staff already face an uphill battle. The last thing they need is inadequate equipment or overly complex systems.

Regarding the workforce plan, Cancer Research UK has highlighted what it calls

“a lack of detail on cancer-specific professions”.

What assessment has the Minister made of that? Can he set out what engagement his Department is having with organisations such as Cancer Research UK on ensuring that services such as oncology are adequately staffed into the future?

The final point on which I wish to press the Minister relates to the inequality in access that all hon. Members have spoken about. Approximately 30,000 extra cases of cancer in the UK each year are attributable to socioeconomic deprivation. Studies have consistently shown that there is unwarranted variation in radiotherapy access rates. We have heard about poor access in rural parts of England, which is an issue that specific hubs linked to the main centres of excellence would start to tackle. I certainly welcome the calls from the hon. Members for North Devon and for Westmorland and Lonsdale. It is crazy that their constituents are missing out on key treatments because access requires them to travel too far, and some who do access such treatments give up their treatment early. We should be doing everything we can to encourage people to access those treatments and keep on them until they are completed.

There are issues with monitoring the inequalities. Cancer Research UK has called for improvements to be made to radiotherapy data collection so that policymakers can understand the scale of the problem and set about addressing it. Does the Minister agree? What action is he taking to ensure that we eliminate the inequalities in radiotherapy access that we have heard about today, and certainly to try to get England to the average level of kit needed, if not to exceed the average? I do not just want England to be average at these things; I want us to be an exemplar.

The next Labour Government will work tirelessly to improve access to radiotherapy, alongside providing the NHS with the staff it needs. We will reform our health system and embrace new technology that has the potential to transform the way we deliver care. We will build an NHS that is fit for the future, and we aim to achieve all relevant cancer waiting time standards within our first term. That is a pledge that we have made: we have done it before, and there is no reason we cannot do it again, with the political will.

Until then, however, we need to see this Government engaging with clinicians and experts, and doing everything in their power to ensure that the treatment is there for patients when they need it most. As I said, this is not a party political point. We are a responsible Opposition. We encourage the Government to do more. We want them to meet those targets and to expand services—particularly in rural areas, so that access is equal across the country. We encourage Ministers to do that, and to do it at pace. If they do, we will support them.