Cancer Care

Feryal Clark Excerpts

Tuesday 14th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Feryal Clark (Enfield North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Paisley. I will start by paying tribute to the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Nicola Richards) for securing this important debate. I offer my sincere condolences on the passing of her mother and close relatives. I also want to praise the contributions of Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) and the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron).

Many important organisations do amazing work around this subject, including Cancer Research UK and Macmillan —the list goes on. We are grateful for all of the work that they do. Like me, those organisations are incredibly worried about the future of cancer care.

As hon. Members have set out, we all know that the best way to improve cancer care and survival rates is by diagnosing and treating cancer early. However, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle, the Public Accounts Committee report on NHS England’s backlogs and waiting times found that waiting times for cancer were

“at their worst recorded level”.

Responding to those findings, the chief executive of the NHS confederation said that “a decade of austerity” had left it to “grapple 133,000 staff vacancies” and

“a shortage of key equipment”.

We have a health service gripped by a funding and workforce crisis. It is a terrible indictment of the Government’s policy on cancer care, and I know that that will concern Members across the House. The current Chancellor himself recognises that. He said that Labour’s workforce plan was

“something I very much hope the government also adopts on the basis that smart governments always nick the best ideas of their opponents.”

I very much hope that, in tomorrow’s Budget, he takes his own advice and adopts Labour’s plans to double the number of medical school places and train an extra 10,000 nurses to alleviate some of the issues in the NHS.

The current waiting times are out of control. The Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust—a trust that is very close to my own constituency and is used by my constituents—found that only 79% of people saw a specialist within 14 days of an urgent suspected cancer referral in January 2023, missing NHS England’s target of 93%. If the target was met, around 520 additional patients would have had cancer diagnosed or ruled out on time. That contrasts with when Labour left government, when over 95% of patients were seen within two weeks.

Ministers point to the impact of covid, but we entered the pandemic with record waiting lists, and cancer targets were repeatedly being missed. Indeed, cancer patients have been waiting longer for care every year since 2010. Will the Minister explain how the Government plan to get a grip on cancer care, and co-ordinate the strategy to cut waiting times? They are truly devastating for patients and families around the country.

It is not only diagnostics that are the issue. The NHS foundation that I just mentioned found in January that only 39% of patients started treatment within 62 days of an urgent suspected cancer referral, missing NHS England’s target of 85%. Only 39%; that is a damning indictment. It represents a two-month period of uncertainty for patients and families in this country over their future. Those stats are extremely concerning, for the reasons mentioned by Members throughout the debate. The longer patients wait for a diagnosis or treatment, the less their chance of survival.

It does not seem as though the human cost of inaction has fully registered with the Government. The key reason for the lack of staff is that, although NHS staff are working incredibly hard, there are simply not enough of them. Earlier, we identified 133,000 staff vacancies. If we look closer at those vacancies, according to the Health and Social Care Committee’s report on cancer services, on a full-time equivalent basis, we are due to be short of 189 clinical oncologists, 390 consultant pathologists, 1,939 radiologists and more than 3,300 specialist cancer nurses by 2030. The report is critical of the Government for lacking any serious plan to address that. We can all agree with that judgment.

In a statement in autumn 2022, the Government committed to publishing a comprehensive workforce plan in 2023, including an independently verified forecast for the number of doctors, nurses and other professionals who will be needed in five, 10 and 15 years’ time. What level of detail will be included in the published plan, and to what degree with there be transparency in projected staffing numbers in key specialist areas?

Promises of a dedicated 10-year cancer plan did not materialise last year, as we have heard. Ministers are instead consulting on a separate major conditions strategy. I know how disappointed the organisations I outlined earlier are about that. For example, Cancer Research UK stated:

“It is therefore extremely disappointing the promised plan will no longer be published and will instead be replaced by a 5-year Major Conditions Strategy, of which cancer will be only one part”.

What is that delay going to do to the future of cancer care, and how many patients will be affected? There seems to be a common theme of delayed reviews and empty promises with this Government. Patients need action now. The number of cancer cases is continuing to grow, and the future of cancer care is increasingly uncertain. It is vital that the Government ensure that they have a long-term strategic plan across cancer pathways. More work is needed everywhere with cancer care, including on prevention efforts, tackling the backlog, and chronic workforce shortages—the list goes on.

I will finish with some optimism for the future of cancer care. There have been huge advances in science, medicine and technology, and Britain has been leading the way. That gives us hope for the future, but cancer patients and their families need the Government to solve the huge problems in the NHS, starting with the workforce, in order to get the waiting lists down, get early diagnoses up and transform survival rates for cancer patients. We need a plan and we need to see some action; I look forward to hearing the Minister tell us how the Government intend to deliver that.