Health and Social Care Update

Dan Jarvis Excerpts

Thursday 18th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I highly, 100%, wholeheartedly agree with my right hon. Friend. The model that we established in the vaccines taskforce—of the holy trinity of business, academia and civil service colleagues working together as one team—was learned from reforms from his time in government. It has worked incredibly well, and I think will do as well in the future.

We also apply that approach to therapeutics, and one of the reasons, alongside the NHS, why we are the only country in the world that has participated in the discovery of all the current therapeutics is our use of that approach. Obviously we are driving it further, and I would be very happy to discuss it with my right hon. Friend.

[Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab) [V]]

One of the gravest threats posed by covid is its potential to create a cancer epidemic. I recently co-ordinated a cross-party letter to the Secretary of State in support of an urgently needed £50 million refurbishment plan for Sheffield’s Weston Park cancer centre. I urge the Secretary of State to give serious consideration to the proposal, which would ensure that patients across South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw received the best possible treatment.

[Matt Hancock]

I have seen the letter and I am looking into what we can do. Because of the crisis the need to tackle cancer is more urgent but there is also more hope, and the hope is that the underlying technology behind some of the vaccine—the so-called mRNA technology—also has the potential to improve cancer-fighting technology radically. So we propose and plan to support very significantly work on that, in order to find further breakthroughs in cancer treatment. I would be very happy to talk to the hon. Gentleman—and indeed you, Madam Deputy Speaker—about the proposal for South Yorkshire.