Brain Tumours

Debate between Helen Jones and Nadhim Zahawi

Monday 18th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Helen Jones]

That £35 million includes spending from the voluntary sector. The report states that it is simply not good enough for the Government to leave decisions on such spending solely to the voluntary sector.

We welcome the decision of Cancer Research UK and Children with Cancer UK to prioritise spending on brain tumour research as a cancer of unmet need, but we are calling on the Government to identify the gaps in funding, to take action to remedy them and most important, to make it clear that they see this research as a priority. We heard evidence that creating a positive research environment with an emphasis on increasing funding would not only keep our scientists in this country, but attract scientists from elsewhere in the world. Britain has the potential to be a world leader in this sort of research but at the moment we are not.

The Government said in their reply to the petition that decisions on funding are based on a number of factors, including the size and quality of the workforce. That ignores the fact that, as the hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) said, this is a Catch-22 situation. At the moment, young trained oncologists are having to change specialties or leave this country to pursue their research. Without an increase in funding, we simply cannot attract the good PhD students and postdoctoral researchers we need to make progress and to build up the cohort of young scientists who will go on to research this disease and may make the important discoveries of the future.

There are other barriers to research. One is the difficulty of getting enough tissue to work on. Only about 30% of patients are asked whether they will donate tissue, yet polls show that up to 90% would do so if asked. We do not have enough specialist support nurses and, according to the evidence, we do not even have enough people who can transfer tissue from hospitals to laboratories.

The other problem that researchers come across—the Government really could act in this area—is that they must make applications to many local biobanks to get enough material to work on. Often, those biobanks have different procedures, application forms and so on. We urge the Government, while keeping safeguards in place, to try to tackle the problem of biobanking. Unless researchers have access to tissue, they cannot do the fundamental research that we need. The University of Southampton has started to use tissue left over from diagnosis but, again, the system is grossly underfunded. In the end, I am afraid the issue comes back to money if we want to make progress.

We also highlight other issues, such as the need for access to non-therapeutic drugs, which can improve brain surgery outcomes, and the need for access to off-patent drugs, which can be used for new indications. The Government said in response to the Off-patent Drugs Bill that they did not need a Bill to allow that. We need to make progress in that area urgently, but I will not spend too much time on it now, because we are pressed for time.

I do, however, want to say this to the Government. I said earlier that brain tumours may not be as rare as is perceived, and the reasons for that are simple. The numbers are going up. The system of recording has been changed. The experts who spoke to us said that they do not yet know the reasons for that. Secondary tumours are not recorded, yet they still have to be treated, and benign tumours are not recorded, but they can still kill. It is that, and the huge burden of the disease, that we think the Minister ought to take into account, or at least ought to get his Department to take into account, to deal with this issue. The five-year survival rate for brain tumours is only 19.8%. When it comes to cancer as a whole, 50% survive for 10 years or more. That is the difference, because of lack of funding and lack of research.

I hope that the Minister will look at the personal stories in our report. They are there for a reason. Let me remind people of some of them: Saira Ahmed, dead at the age of 6, Abbie Walker, also dead at 6, Lucy Goulding, who died at 16, and Stephen Realf, whose sister started the petition. An RAF officer who was apparently in excellent health, he was diagnosed at 19 and dead at 26. There are many more, whom I do not have time to name. There are those who died and those who survived—remarkable people such as Hannah Jones, a young woman who gave evidence to us and now devotes her time to promoting the HeadSmart campaign. And there are the families of those who died. In all my time in Parliament, I have never met such an amazing group of people. They had undergone the most appalling tragedies, but did not want to point the finger of blame. They simply wanted to use their experience to make life better for others. They deserve that we listen to what they say.

I say gently to the Minister that it is not often in ministerial life that one gets a chance to make a real difference. We know that Ministers get bogged down in the minutiae of every day and that things come down the chain to them, but this is a chance to make a difference. It is a chance to leave a mark that will be there long after he leaves ministerial office—not that I am hoping he will leave soon—long after most of us have left Parliament, in fact.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Helen Jones]

I am going to wind up my speech, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me.

This is a real chance to save lives, so I say to the Minister: read the report and champion its recommendations in government. That way we can have world-class scientists in this country and save the lives of many people, including young people, who will have the chance to make an enormous contribution to this country. It is as simple as that. This cancer has been neglected for far too long. That now has to change. [Applause.]