Access to Radiotherapy

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate, Mr Davies, and also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). We in this House are very blessed that he is here today because he had early treatment and was able to respond to it. I spoke to him personally at the time, and I know that others did. We are very thankful to God that he is here today and able to participate in this and many other debates in the House on a regular basis. We thank him for that.

I also thank the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) for setting the scene. We are greatly indebted to him for his leadership, for his interest in this subject matter and for every occasion on which he comes forward. We are also indebted to the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) as well. We are all on the all-party parliamentary group on cancer together, so we have regular contact with one another and with others as well. I give credit to both hon. Gentlemen for their leadership and contributions, and to others on the APPG for bringing this forward.

It is nice to see the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Enfield North (Feryal Clark), in her place. I always look forward to the Minister’s contribution. I believe that we will get a response that helps us to address the issues that we are raising today. I believe that we are greatly blessed to have the Minister in her place; she has a particular interest in this subject matter and is eager to secure change.

The debate today is about change; it is about making sure that we can move forward. I probably cannot even quantify—the hon. Member for Easington might be able to—the number of times we have asked about radiotherapy services. We have asked about these services before, met the Minister before and sent letters before, but we do not seem to be getting to where we want to be. That is what the hon. Gentleman said in his introduction. That is where we are.

There is a staggering backlog of an estimated 47,000 people missing a cancer diagnosis in the UK, and Macmillan estimates that the backlog of those waiting for a first treatment stands at 32,000 in England alone. Only last week in my constituency—this is not the Minister’s responsibility, to be fair, as it is a devolved matter—I met someone who was eagerly seeking an early meeting with a consultant and doctor about cancer. It is so important that she gets that; she is very worried about her circumstances. When I became aware of them, I was also concerned. We need to address that issue.

Radiotherapy in particular is one of the mainstays of cancer treatment. Modelling suggests that between 40% and 50% of people diagnosed with cancer should receive radiotherapy as part of their treatment. If it is part of their treatment and they cannot get it, we have a severe problem. The difficulty lies in workforce shortages, to which the hon. Member for Easington referred. They remain the biggest challenge facing the NHS and access to radiotherapy today. The Chancellor’s October Budget, unfortunately, missed a key opportunity to tackle this issue. Can the Minister give us some indication of the discussions that she has had with the Chancellor about what can be done to address the shortfall?

Macmillan Cancer Support says:

“The pandemic has both laid bare and exacerbated the terrible strain the cancer workforce has been under for many years.”

I know that the pandemic has exacerbated that incredibly. It is frustrating to know that the waiting lists that we had in 2019 are the waiting lists of 2021—and now 2022. It is essential that the budget for Health Education England is confirmed immediately, ensuring an increase in funding to train the cancer workforce that the NHS desperately needs.

Too few cancer patients have full access to a cancer nurse specialist, which is crucial in reducing costs and improving patient outcomes. It is very clear that in the reform of the NHS priority must be given to training these nurse specialists and ensuring that the funding is there to pay them for the extra responsibility that they take on and for the workload that they take off their colleagues, the doctors. Perhaps the Minister could give us some idea of what is going to happen in relation to that issue in the reform of the NHS.

Again, I am deeply grateful to Macmillan Cancer Support for the information that it has sent me. It estimates that in order to help meet the Government’s NHS long term plan, we need an additional 3,371 cancer nurse specialists, which means doubling the number of cancer nurses by 2030. In introducing the debate, the hon. Member for Easington mentioned that issue and I mention it again now, not simply to repeat it but to underline gently the importance of having those nurses in place. It is a major ask but not an impossible one, or at least it should not be impossible.

How do we get those nurses? First, we get the finance in place. An estimated total of £124 million is needed to train the next generation of cancer nurses by 2030. Again, what has happened in the discussions that the Minister has hopefully already had, or will be able to have, with the Chancellor? That process must begin with bursaries, which give the incentive and encouragement, if it is needed, to enable not just young students but mature students—those with mortgages and debts to pay, and perhaps children to care for as well—to be able to take the step into nursing. I make that comment because of a particular example that I know of. The dream of one of my constituents was to go into nursing. She worked in a shoe shop and her husband worked in landscaping; both of them had low-paid jobs. When she made the decision to follow her dream and go into nursing, she simply could not make ends meet, which is why bursaries are important.

I know this girl personally, so I know that she has endless compassion. She worked to become an intensive care nurse. She is a clever lady who wanted to make a difference in this world, but simply could not do so. She went into care work during covid and is making a difference in a nursing home, but will she ever become an ICU nurse, as she wanted? She thinks not, but I would like to think that the differences we make in this place and the decisions that we take will enable people such as Sarah to do the good that they want to do in the world, because there are many people out there who just love to help other people. We in this House—you, Mr Davies, and the rest of us here—are MPs who wish to help people; indeed, that is our job.

In 2020, the all-party parliamentary group for radiotherapy reported that a fifth of radiotherapy machines were older than their recommended lifespan of 10 years. NHS England must ensure a sustainable future so that machines are upgraded on a rolling basis and when they need to be. That process must be continuous, so we need an action plan to make it happen. Again, I ask the Minister a question: what has been done to address the need for that additional investment? Unfortunately, it is a fact that this comes down to finance.

Additional investment in radiotherapy would be best spent on upgrading existing machines and software rather than on increasing the overall number of radiotherapy machines or centres. Cancer Research UK has said that even if new centres were built, it would be very difficult to find the staff to run them. We need a co-ordinated and strategic plan that considers all the potential issues for the future, especially in rural areas such as the one that the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale represents. As he often says, in rural areas staff shortages are often the most severe that they are anywhere.

In the long term, consideration must be given to introducing innovative technology to transform care. For example, there are a limited number of magnetic resonance linear accelerators, or MR linacs for short, in the UK. They significantly increase the precision of analysis and therefore the effectiveness of treatment, which is really important. The Government must consider how to manage funding over a long term, to expand access to MR linacs and other cutting-edge technologies. That also includes purchasing new radiotherapy technology to evaluate its efficacy as a cancer treatment.

I will finish with this comment: the fact is that much greater investment is needed. We should remember that radiotherapy is used for half of cancer treatments, so it is critical for addressing cancer. Cancer affects many people and we need to give radiotherapy the priority that it deserves, getting the nurses and the equipment in place urgently. Unfortunately, there are literally millions of people whom radiotherapy can save and thereby extend their life. It seems to be agreed by all those who have spoken in this debate, and I believe that it will also be agreed by all those who will speak after me, that we must do all that is possible to do in this place in that regard.