Pancreatic Cancer

Debate between Eric Ollerenshaw and Julian Huppert

Monday 8th September 2014 Westminster Hall

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Chope. It is good to serve under you, and we did hear the applause.

I congratulate my colleague the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) on such a brilliant start to the debate and I thank him for the support that he has given the all-party group on pancreatic cancer month after month. May I also put on the record that my interest in the subject comes from having lost my partner to pancreatic cancer in 2009, only six weeks after diagnosis? I am grateful for the support that I received, and continue to receive, as a result of my loss from my hon. Friends the Members for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) and for Redditch (Karen Lumley). They are sat close to me to keep me going in the debate, and I am always grateful for their support.

I decided to campaign on pancreatic cancer and helped to set up the all-party group, which I now chair. As the hon. Member for Scunthorpe pointed out, that has meant starting to meet others campaigning on the same issue. I have met representatives from charities such as Pancreatic Cancer UK, which acts as a secretariat for the all-party group and is ably led by Alex Ford, its chief executive; from Pancreatic Cancer Action, founded and led by pancreatic cancer survivor Ali Stunt; and from the Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund, founded and led by Maggie Blanks, who lost her husband to the disease.

I have also met Maggie Watts, whose petition ultimately led to today’s debate. As it happens, she lost her husband, Kevin, only two months after I lost my partner, so we have shared and similar frustrations. That shared sense of loss, the sense of injustice and the shocking survival rates for pancreatic cancer, along with the small amount of time that can generally be spent with people following diagnosis, drive us all—whether MPs, chief executives, charity workers or volunteers—to raise awareness and, I hope, to bring about change so that others do not have to go through what we did.

I thank Maggie Watts and the hundreds of people who campaigned so hard to get more than 100,000 signatures on their petition. I know it was touch and go, but they have managed it in only the past few days. The effort that they have put in to change the status quo, in honour and memory of their loved ones, should be applauded. I really thank them.

As the hon. Member for Scunthorpe mentioned, the all-party group on pancreatic cancer produced a report last year, which made a number of recommendations on how to improve awareness, diagnosis, treatment and care for pancreatic cancer patients. We did not even broach the subject of research in that report; to have done so would have complicated things unnecessarily. This year, therefore, the all-party group is carrying out an inquiry into how to increase the quantity and quality of research into pancreatic cancer in the UK. We held the last of the four evidence sessions last week and will be producing a report in late October. I want to spend some time talking about issues that emerged from the inquiry.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) for securing this important debate. Before I was elected, I used to do research into cancer targets. Pancreatic cancer was one of them, and I was looking for new targets. I support the call for research. An oncologist who worked on the issue and with whom I was collaborating said, “All my patients will die very quickly from this unless they are hit by a car in the meantime. We have to change that situation.”

[Eric Ollerenshaw]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for underlining that critical point about survival rates and their impact on the ability of researchers to get that much-needed research.

The consensus we found was that more work is needed and that one of the reasons why survival rates for other cancers are increasing is that effective screening and markers have been developed to allow early diagnosis, thus giving more time for curative treatments to be given to patients. The other side of the argument, which we will go into, is that what we are looking for is support and treatment to allow survival rates after diagnosis to increase. In this day and age, having only six weeks left in which to make life-shattering decisions is unbelievably difficult for people.

Education Funding for 18-year-olds

Debate between Eric Ollerenshaw and Julian Huppert

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Dr Huppert]

I agree. It is perverse to say that a free school or academy is more public than a sixth-form college or a regional college; it simply does not make sense and must be changed.

Long Road sixth-form college has its own problems. It has one of the lowest levels of funding of any sixth-form college; it has £480 per pupil per year less than the average. If it got average funding it would have an extra £940,000 and there would not be such a problem. It does not get protection, because it was not one of the high-funded sixth-form colleges, and it gets hit by another £70,000 or so, and pupils will miss out as a result. It was also hit years ago, because the Learning and Skills Council told it to put together a bid for new buildings that it desperately needed, but the calculations were done wrong and there was no money available, and it is stuck with poor buildings. Yet despite that it is in the top 10% of value added in the entire sector.

All three institutions do well and they would be delighted if the Minister visited—it is not a long distance—to look at what they are doing and at the problems they face. They do a great job, but this is the straw that can break the camel’s back, because it is not something that they can do much about.

Long Road sixth-form college does not have a way of changing its curriculum offer to students who are already enrolled in level 2 courses at the moment; it will not have the opportunity to take on a new system. It would be completely wrong to say, at the end of somebody’s level 2 year, “Sorry, you can’t do the course you signed up for. You can only do a 12-unit applied qualification: two A-levels rather than three.” That simply cannot be done; that would not be reasonable.

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

On that point, will my hon. Friend give way?