Cancer Referral Targets

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Monday 5th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I know that the Chancellor is very aware of it, and of course it was the Chancellor who in the autumn kicked off that this workforce plan should be done. The Chancellor is quite rightly very involved in making sure we get the right answer now.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, during the first lockdown we had some 40,000 fewer cancer diagnoses than we would have expected during a normal period. Cancer develops slowly and we cannot yet calculate the lethality, but will my noble friend the Minister consider, before we ever contemplate another policy of mass house arrest, the long-term consequences for health of people being confined to home? It may be, as we see the excess mortality figures coming in from around the world, that lockdowns ended up killing more people than they saved.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

My noble friend is correct that there were knock-on implications of lockdown, cancer detection rates being one of them. Noble Lords have heard me speak of Chris Whitty’s concern about heart disease because those check-ups were missed, and mental health is another area. Clearly, these are some of the things we are hoping to learn from the Covid inquiry, so that we know the impact of lockdowns, not just on restricting Covid but more widely, on the population as a whole.