NHS: Cancer Treatments

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I would like to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jowell, on arranging this debate, and express my extreme admiration for her brave and moving speech. It is an honour to be able to add praise for all she has done and for the battle that she and her family have fought. As a result of her efforts, I believe that she will help many in the future who are less fortunate than her.

My younger sister died of cancer last year. She was a successful novelist with a great capacity to make friends and an extraordinary knowledge of culture and languages. But she had a pain and she did what so many women do, which was to struggle on and delay seeking medical help, with fatal consequences. In spite of the brilliance of the doctors in Dartmouth, New Hampshire, she died within two years of her first pain. So I am speaking today not only to commend the noble Baroness, Lady Jowell, but to encourage everyone to seek medical advice in such circumstances, and to endorse the Government’s scheme for referring possible cancer cases to hospital within two weeks.

Since I have a business background, I want to make two other points. The first is to commend the pharmaceutical sector for its many breakthroughs. Of course university research and development is critical, and we have an extraordinary share of Nobel Prizes in this country, but we also have great firms: AstraZeneca, GSK and smaller innovative sisters which apply capital and data, do trials and create a business model that can help millions of patients and shareholders—for example, our pension funds. These businesses have a real role in the task of finding innovative solutions for hard-to-tackle cancers, including brain cancer, which we are discussing today.

The second is to highlight the role of business-focused corporate responsibility. When I was at Tesco, we created a partnership with Cancer Research UK called Race for Life. Every year we organised 200 or 300 races in parks across Britain, with a lead event in Battersea Park. I ran it 11 years on the trot. They were amazing experiences, with women young and old, from our checkout to David Cameron’s office. There was always a splendid turnout of MPs and leaders like Helen Alexander, who sadly died of cancer herself last year. And there was always a bevy of Baronesses to add a touch of class and shed a few pounds, and some of you are here today. That was fun, but the important thing is that we raised a vast amount of money for Cancer Research UK—over £400 million in that period—and we increased the salience of cancer research through our TV ads and promotions. And on the back of every runner was scribbled a message about a friend with cancer, or a friend who had died of cancer—a very emotional experience. In that era cancer recovery rates accelerated. We were in the right place at the right time. I wish the noble Baroness’s campaign similar success.