Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between James Duddridge and Dominic Raab(10 years ago)
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Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
T7. The Foreign Secretary knows that my constituent, Ollie Gobat, was brutally murdered in St Lucia in an apparent assassination. I am grateful that officials are discussing assurances on the death penalty to allow UK police to support the investigation, at St Lucia’s request, but we are seven months on from Ollie’s murder. The death penalty has not been applied in 19 years. Will the Minister pick up the phone to the St Lucian Prime Minister and help to resolve the outstanding issues so that we can get justice for Ollie and his family?
James Duddridge
This is indeed a tragic and brutal murder, and my heart goes out to the Gobat family. I wrote to the St Lucian Prime Minister on 14 October to seek assurances that any person convicted of this crime will not receive the death penalty, and following my hon. Friend’s excellent work, yesterday I wrote to the St Lucian high commissioner to press him on this issue. I will take up the suggestion to phone the St Lucian Prime Minister if an answer is not forthcoming, and I will speak to my hon. Friend as soon as I have done so.
Brain Tumours in Children
Debate between James Duddridge and Dominic Raab(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Raab
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and he is absolutely bang on. I will come on to discuss the three specific measures that are key as part of that co-ordination.
Many of these tragedies could be averted. Whether it is preventing avoidable deaths or limiting the permanent damage inflicted by brain tumours, early diagnosis is the key, as has already been said; I suspect that there will be consensus on that.
James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)
As well as early diagnosis, early treatment is vital; in many cases, that involves immediate surgery. Will my hon. Friend press the Minister to make some statement as to how long it takes from diagnosis to treatment, and about how things are progressing on that front?
Mr Raab
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention; I know that he feels very strongly about that point. It is an excellent point and the Minister will have heard it. I have a range of points that we can certainly follow up with the Minister if they are not addressed in her speech, but that is an important point on top of the critical importance of early diagnosis.
There is a wealth of clinical and scientific evidence to back up the argument that early diagnosis is key. Research up until 2006 showed that the median delay in diagnosing a brain tumour in a child in Britain was 12 to 13 weeks. In other words, half the affected youngsters took more than three months to reach diagnosis and then treatment. That was up to three times longer than the diagnosis delay in other countries, including the US and Canada. Let us just think about what that means. It means child after child walking around—in their home, around their school and even through their own GP’s surgery—with identifiable symptoms of brain tumours that could have been picked up but sadly were not.