Health: Cancer

Lord Sharkey Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

I fully agree that the National Health Service is very cost-effective and that it has been an extraordinary service. However, we have many challenges coming down the track, as the noble Lord will be acutely aware—not least our ageing population, which needs to be supported, particularly at home and in the community where appropriate, and not immediately taken into hospitals, where interventionist care may not be in the best interests of those patients. Therefore it is extremely important that there is more clinical judgment on the best interests of each patient and how these things are organised, and that they are not simply driven forward by the way in which provision is organised at the moment, which is very much focused on secondary institutions.

[Lord Sharkey]

My Lords, the biggest cause of cancer deaths in the country is still lung cancer. It kills more people every year than breast cancer and prostate cancer combined, yet lung cancer attracts only 5 per cent of cancer research funding. The Minister has said that this is unsatisfactory and thinks that it is largely due to the lack of first-class research proposals. Does the Minister agree with me that we should not let this situation continue, with the biggest killer getting the least research? Will the Minister consider urgently sponsoring a meeting of all interested parties to see how we might intervene to generate many more fundable first-class cancer research proposals?

[Baroness Northover]

My noble friend raised this with my other noble friend Lord Howe, who has taken a slight break in the health Bill at the moment. I was struck by his answer, which was on the paucity of cancer research funding for lung cancer. I therefore have more information for my noble friend, which is that the amount spent on lung cancer between 2006 and 2010 in fact doubled in comparison with a 28 per cent increase for overall cancer research spending. The National Institute for Health Research, for example, is currently hosting 62 studies on lung cancer that are being set up or are just beginning to recruit patients. I hope, therefore, that my noble friend will be encouraged that there appears to be a shift. However, if my noble friend would like to write to my other noble friend the Minister with detail about the meeting that he would like, the Minister would be delighted to receive that letter.