Childhood Cancer Outcomes

Justin Tomlinson Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

With a all the moving stories, this is a difficult debate to listen to, but I congratulate my near neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage), on securing it. Hampshire is a small community, so it can be no surprise that nurses who treated Sophie live in Romsey and Southampton North and that her family have friends who live in my constituency. I have heard from them about Sophie’s bucket list and what her mother Charlotte wants to secure for children suffering from cancer, and that very much echoes comments made to me by my constituent Jane O’Brien, who lost her son George to teenage cancer some years ago. The O’Brien family have dedicated their time to setting up George’s trust, to raising funds to bring the first ever teenage cancer unit to Southampton General Hospital and to raising funds for the world-leading immunology centre in Southampton. Of course, we have heard today that too little of that research and money goes to childhood cancers, which are not as rare as we would like to hope.

George’s family have made a really important point to me about when he was diagnosed. When he went to the doctor’s surgery on the Tuesday, nobody recognised how serious his symptoms were. He died on the Friday, a matter of days later, but they felt strongly that the support was not there for them as a family. They did know what George had died of. They were not given the same level of support and assistance that other bereaved families might have received in similar circumstances.

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is making a typically powerful speech and she makes a key point. We must be better at linking up parents so that they have crucial peer-to-peer support as they go through the unimaginable horrors they face in such situations.

[Caroline Nokes]

That is a really important point, not just for parents but for the wider family and siblings who also need such help.

When I was a very new MP, I remember being contacted by my constituent Pip Armitage, who came to see me with Sacha Langton-Gilkes—the most amazing woman—to talk about the charity HeadSmart. They made a point that we have heard several times in the Chamber: we need a joined-up strategy and public awareness. We have heard about the meningitis campaign that has seen hugely improved awareness among families, parents and the medical profession and enables the condition to be identified early. In George’s case and that of too many childhood cancer victims, the condition is diagnosed too late because GPs do not have the awareness and the family do not know what signs to look for.

Sacha ran the most phenomenal campaign to put awareness cards, particularly on brain tumours, into schools and local authorities, and that was really effective. As part of the children’s cancer mission that my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport is rightly calling for, we need to have that same level of public awareness campaigning on childhood cancers. We need better referral guidelines for doctors, so that doctors such as George’s GP, who I levy no criticism at, spot the signs and refer children quickly and efficiently to the brilliant hospitals that are there to treat them.

This is such a crucial subject. As we can see this afternoon, there is enormous cross-party support for something to be done. I know that the Minister is listening hard and I look forward to what she will propose.