Cancer Priorities

Andrew Selous Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

It is a privilege to speak in the debate, and I should like to start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) on his work chairing the all-party group and on his excellent speech, in which he covered the whole area of cancer care. We are all grateful to him.

I am speaking today in my capacity as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on brain tumours. I have not held the post for long and, like many MPs, I came to the issue through one of my constituents, an inspirational lady called Nicole Witts. She was diagnosed with a brain tumour many years ago, and she contacted me a few years ago and explained the effect that it had had on her life. She talked about the massive need for increased research funding for brain tumours and asked me to become the patron of her local charity, which raises funds for such research. I gladly agreed to do so, and I have been hugely inspired and impressed by all that she has done. It is she who caused me to become the chair of the APPG and to make this speech today.

I did not know a great deal about brain tumours before I met Nicole, and this has been quite a sharp learning curve for me. Brain tumours are among the very few conditions that are becoming more prevalent than they were a few decades ago. They are much more common now than they were in 1970. Cancer patients are reporting a worse experience in the NHS for brain tumours than for any other cancer. Unfortunately, 58% of men and women diagnosed with a brain cancer die within a year, compared with 5% of people with breast cancer, 35% of people with leukaemia and 7% of people with prostate cancer. There are also considerable regional variations in incidence, ranging from 108 per million in London to 145 per million in the south-west. Brain cancer is the chief cause of cancer deaths in children, in the under-25s and in the under-35s. The consequence of brain tumours striking so young is that the average tumour is responsible for over 20 years of life lost in the average patient, making it the most lethal cancer by that measure.

Let us look at the funding that brain tumour charities receive. I think that Members will be quite surprised by how low it is. The National Cancer Research Institute consistently devotes less than 1% of its research spending to brain tumours. Between 2002 and 2012, the figure was 0.8%, and in 2012 itself the figure was only 0.78%. There was an average of 6.9 deaths among the under-45s for every £1 million spent on research for all cancers as a whole, but the corresponding figure for brain tumours was 82.5 deaths, and more than £7,700 was spent on research for every death from leukaemia, whereas just £1,400 was spent for every death from a brain tumour.

Between 2002 and 2012, breast cancer research received £352 million of funding, leukaemia research received £291 million, prostate cancer research received £149 million, cervical cancer research received £47 million and, right at the bottom, brain tumour research received only £35 million, less than 10% of what breast cancer research received. As hon. Members can appreciate, brain tumour research funding is very much the poor relation. That is a particular problem because, unlike with many other cancers, brain tumour research does not benefit from general research, for a number of clinical reasons: brain tumours are very different from other types of cancer; the blood-brain barrier presents particular difficulties for researchers; and there are more than 120 different types of brain tumour, which makes research much more difficult. The conclusion to draw is that it is only through giving directly to brain tumour charities and funding laboratory-based research that all types of brain tumours—adult, paediatric, low-grade, benign, high-grade and malignant—will be cured.

Let us examine the experience of people living with brain tumours. I am indebted to the Brain Tumour Charity for its report on that just before Christmas, just as I am to Brain Tumour Research for its excellent report last July on the research issue. When we examine people’s experiences of care, we find that we clearly need to make improvements to make sure that they have the best possible quality of life before and after diagnosis. We know that 38% of people living with a brain tumour visited their GP more than five times before being diagnosed. We know that communication between health care professionals, and people living with a brain tumour and their carers, very much needs to be improved. The Brain Tumour Charity has made a number of recommendations in that area: it wants professionals to recognise and respond to the signs and symptoms of brain tumours more quickly; it wants data collected on the quality of care in different areas up and down the country, so that we can see who is doing well and who is not; and it wants to ensure that written information about treatment options is given to people, along with proper signposting to sources of expert help.

I also wish to highlight the importance of clinical nurse specialists, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (David Heyes). We know from the 2013 cancer patient experience survey that there is a huge difference in the quality of care experienced by patients when a clinical nurse specialist is present. When a clinical nurse specialist was present 74% of patients were given easy-to-understand written information about the type of cancer they had, whereas fewer than half of patients—only 49%—received it when no such specialist was present. Some 87% of patients were given a choice of different types of treatment—that is pretty important—with a specialist, whereas only 67% were given it when no such specialist was present. If we look at those patients who were given information about support and self-help groups—a really important area—86% got that with a clinical nurse specialist and only just over half, 51%, when there was not one present.

For those patients who were eligible for free prescriptions, 78% were informed of that when there was a clinical nurse specialist present and only 55% when there was not. Prescriptions are expensive, so that can make a big difference. Similarly, with information on financial help and benefits to which patients might be entitled, 58%, who had a clinical nurse specialist were told what they could claim, and only 25% were told when there was not one present. I think the Minister will agree that those are pretty huge variations in the quality of care. I absolutely agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay said about the importance of early diagnosis.

The final matter I want to raise is the excellent campaign run by HeadSmart, which has produced information cards. I know that the Minister is aware of them. I pay huge tribute to the Brain Tumour Charity and to others who are absolutely determined to get these cards into schools across our country. I have written to every colleague in the House—I hope you got the e-mail as well, Mr Deputy Speaker—telling them about how we can do that, and have provided a sample letter that we can all send to our head teachers. I suggest that colleagues write to their local authorities as well. It is so easy to get these cards. HeadSmart provides them, so local authorities and schools do not have to pay anything. The cards provide the warning symptoms that we need to look out for in pre-school children, children aged five to 11 and young people between the ages of 12 to 18. Symptoms include persistent recurring vomiting, recurrent headaches, balance and co-ordination problems, abnormal eye movements, blurred or double vision, behavioural changes and fits and seizures. They are all on the card, which will fit in a purse or wallet.

My challenge to Members here today and to those who read this debate is to get these cards out to their schools, and to our young people. We know the vast difference that early diagnosis can make; it could literally be the difference between life and death. This is something practical that we can all do as a result of this debate, and I ask all colleagues to try to do it.