Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Edward Leigh and Pauline Latham

Thursday 20th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

1. What assessment the Commission has made of the effectiveness of the National Audit Office’s scrutiny of the long-term viability of funding for cancer drugs.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I can inform the House that the NAO published an investigation into the cancer drugs fund in September 2015, which set out the facts relating to the fund to inform consideration of what had been achieved. The NAO’s investigation followed up on a number of concerns raised during the earlier work on progress in improving cancer services. The investigation found that all parties agreed that the fund was not sustainable in its form at the time, and that NHS England was proposing a new arrangement for the fund. It also noted that NHS England did not have the data to evaluate the impact of the existing fund on patient outcomes.

[Pauline Latham]

I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. Can he tell the House whether the Public Accounts Committee has actually looked at this issue?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I can indeed. This is a very serious matter that everybody wants to improve, so the Public Accounts Committee followed up on the National Audit Office investigation and recommended that the Department of Health and NHS England make better use of their buying power in order to pay a fair price for cancer drugs and improve data on patient outcomes. The NAO also followed up on several related issues in an April 2016 report. It recommended that the Department and NHS England should, in collaboration with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, consider affordability and ensure best prices for high-cost drugs.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Edward Leigh and Pauline Latham

Thursday 24th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh]

The National Audit Office uses its resources to provide direct support to Parliament and stands ready to support parliamentary scrutiny of Brexit. In my humble view, there should be more, not less, parliamentary scrutiny of Brexit. The NAO is keeping in close touch with Departments as their preparations for exiting the EU develop. This will be a major task for Departments and is likely to include additional work for the NAO, not least the audit of the new Department for Exiting the European Union.

[Pauline Latham]

What value-for-money aspects of Brexit does the NAO intend to examine?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

The NAO’s scrutiny will focus initially on the capacity and capability of Departments to deliver an effective and efficient exit process. The NAO will work with all Departments to assess the potential impact of exiting the European Union on their financial performance and position. The NAO is already the auditor of the new Department for Exiting the European Union and will work with it and the Treasury to ensure efficiency.

Brain Tumours

Debate between Edward Leigh and Pauline Latham

Monday 18th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) on securing this debate. Today’s attendance is testament to how many of us have been approached by constituents, not just now but before the petition, asking us to come and speak on this subject. I will not take up too much of the House’s time.

Last November, I visited the children’s brain tumour research centre at the University of Nottingham, which gave evidence to the Committee’s report. The research centre is an outstanding medical research facility that provides vital support for children and their families as they undergo treatment, and for families who have lost a loved one to a brain tumour. The research centre also services Derbyshire—everyone with a brain problem has to go across to Nottingham—and it gives an outstanding service. The amazing work done in such centres is being held back, as has been said, by a lack of funding, which has been a problem for decades.

Brain tumours are the biggest cancer killer of children and people under 40, yet brain tumours receive just 1.5% of the £498 million spent on research into cancers. I am in no way saying that money should be taken away from research into other cancers; rather, I am pointing to the success that increased funding has achieved in other cancers, such as breast cancer and prostate cancer, for which patients now have an 80% five-year survival rate, compared with less than 20% for brain tumour patients. The lack of funding for brain tumours creates a Catch-22 situation, because researchers are not attracted into the field as the funding is not there for them to work with. As the report states, existing levels of funding have not been sufficient for researchers, such as those at the children’s brain tumour research centre, to make significant advances in their understanding of this horrific disease, although they are working very hard and feel that they are almost on the edge of a breakthrough.

As well as an increase in funding for research on brain tumours, we need greater investment in educating healthcare professionals on the symptoms of brain tumours. Too often people are misdiagnosed by GPs. That is not really the fault of the GPs, because they have to know everything about everything, which is not possible. They sometimes think that the symptoms with which they are presented could not be a brain tumour, and therefore they fail to send the patient for a scan, which is the only way to diagnose a brain tumour. That leads to a situation where 61% of brain tumour patients are now diagnosed at A&E, with children being a high proportion of them. Again, there is a Catch-22 because late diagnosis makes it harder to place patients in clinical trials to research much-needed cancer drugs. Also, the later they are diagnosed, the less chance there is of a cure.

Building on the success of the HeadSmart campaign in incorporating the symptoms of brain tumours, and the variants in children, young people and adults, into National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines on cancer would help GPs to know when they are dealing with a brain tumour and would therefore increase scan referrals, which is the only way that a brain tumour can genuinely be identified. Early diagnosis would greatly increase survival rates and improve the quality of life of those who are diagnosed.

Will the Department tell us whether it believes that the current levels of funding are adequate for progress to be made on improving survival rates for this disease? We need extra funding. A constituent came to me who had been diagnosed with an incurable brain tumour. He wants more money to go into research, not to help him, but so that the people who come after him can have better care and better diagnosis so that they can be cured. We also need the extra funding—

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order.