National Cancer Plan

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

I am glad to hear the noble Baroness making statements about the quality of care she continues to receive, and I wish her well. She makes a good point about screening; some 15 million people are invited to screenings and about 10 million take them up. For bowel cancer screening, we have reduced the age to 50 to incorporate more people. That is very welcome, but I take on board exactly what the noble Baroness said: the tests that are painful or embarrassing all have to be dealt with. As part of the review of screening programmes, there is a constant, repeated look at how communications can be improved to target those who need the screening, and to try to be more creative. I refer again to the community diagnostic centres, which are where people need them to be and are less worrying than, for example, going to a hospital. I take the point about painful screenings, but, for us, it is also important to talk about the alternative, because without that screening I am afraid that the outcomes will be far worse.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the health service for saving me. Come this Friday, it will be six months since I was in the Royal Marsden—last summer, on my holiday—having my bladder and prostate removed. Here I am now, surviving. I had to struggle today to get into Parliament; farmers are protesting about money that needs to be raised to fund the NHS.

I return to the point about honesty that the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, raised at the beginning. You can have all the plans under the sun, but if you do not have the money or the will—and the plans to raise the money—you will not deliver them. I believe there is a question missing at the end of this invitation on the consultation: “Could you please suggest some ideas on how to raise the additional funds required to deliver these plans?” There are alternatives to those that we currently use. It is beholden on both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats to be giving some attention to suggestions—which they would support—whereby we would raise additional money to fund the NHS, as our Government are endeavouring to do at the moment.

I would like the Minister to consider exploring a variety of options: how we might be more flexible in raising funds for the NHS, get the private sector more involved in new experimentation that needs to take place, and get the wider public more involved—perhaps by share interest in PPPs to fund particular operations and exercises; say, for a hospital such as the Chelsea and Westminster. Ask all the hospitals around the country what they would like to have. Could they involve their people? Could they involve the private sector? Could we explore a new model? It will not be done overnight but it needs to be done.