Health: Cancer

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

Pancreatic cancer is an extremely difficult cancer to diagnose. As the noble Lord knows, when it is picked up it is often very advanced and survival rates are very poor indeed. The Government are well aware of the problems here. My honourable friend Paul Burstow in the other place is meeting Pancreatic Cancer UK shortly. I hope that the noble Lord will feed into that. If he has an association with that organisation, can he put his questions to it so that they can be fed to Paul Burstow, or alternatively to me?

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes]

My Lords, is it not a fact that the great improvement in cancer treatment is due to early detection? It is important to keep people trained in that, particularly for the rare cancers that I am always talking about. Do the Government not feel that we owe a great deal to the cancer and research charities that are continuing to do very useful work in alerting people to the need for early detection?

[Baroness Northover]

My noble friend is absolutely right. We owe a huge amount to the organisations in the United Kingdom, not least Cancer Research UK, which is a major player internationally. She is also right about early diagnosis. That is how you start to bring deaths down; you make sure that you diagnose early enough so that you can intervene in a way that is going to be much more effective. Noble Lords might like to know that there will be a first ever national cancer campaign on bowel cancer to flag up the symptoms to people in the hope that they seek diagnosis at a much earlier stage, because if it is caught early it is completely curable.