Brain Tumour Survival Rates

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

Monday 9th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

It is an honour to speak in this debate. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh) and the hon. Member for Witney (Charlie Maynard) for securing it. We have heard many fine and very heartfelt speeches this evening, particularly those recounting personal stories about Members’ families.

Our new cancer strategy was announced last week. Sadly, political events of the past few days have somewhat submerged its importance, but we should be talking about it, as it is much the most important political development as far as I am concerned. We have seen little progress in brain tumour care—that is the truth of the matter. Those tumours are devastating; they rob victims of years of life, and wreck families. I have seen such patients over the years, and I can say that diagnosis may be very difficult, even with the help of hindsight.

An average general practitioner will see a new brain tumour once every seven years, but they will see thousands of patients in that time, so it is not surprising that the tumours are difficult to diagnose. I hear that a patient with a brain tumour will often have visited their general practitioner five or six times before a diagnosis is made. We must do what we can to raise awareness. In ear, nose, and throat care—which, as Members may know, is my specialty—we see a condition called acoustic neuroma. It is a brain tumour on the nerves that lie between the ear and the brain—the balance nerves. Such tumours are rare, even in ear, nose and throat clinics. I would see only a handful of them each year. Sometimes they present with a little hearing loss in one ear, or with just a little ringing. Sometimes they present incidentally.

Some of the other brain tumours we see in the ENT world are very rare. One that sits in the roof of the nose —an olfactory neuroblastoma—is so rare that I probably saw fewer than six or seven cases throughout my career, yet it presents with a loss of sense of smell, which is a very common problem for people who come to see ear, nose and throat surgeons or general practitioners. We must not deceive ourselves that we are dealing with an easy condition, for this is a difficult one.

I believe that we must support research into these mysterious diseases. As I have said before in this Chamber, this country is desperately short of medical researchers and clinical academics. Many of our clinical academics are getting towards the end of their careers, and we are not doing enough to recruit new academics in the early part of theirs. I would like us to think about what policies we might develop to encourage that—this is a political problem. My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden said that given we have made so little progress, we must be content with the status quo. I beg to differ; we are not content with the status quo, and that is why we are all here this evening to discuss this matter.

We know that this is a promising time for some areas of medical research. Genetic research, for instance, is now becoming very important. I am not sure that whole genome sequencing, if that were available for everybody, would solve the problem, but it is the way we are going. Before I came to this place, I was involved in research into a rare ear disease called cholesteatoma. We did genetic research on that—genome sequencing—and we were able to identify some of the genes that probably cause the condition, but that does not make it any easier for us to prevent it, for we cannot choose our genetic code.

The problem with brain tumours is that they are deep-seated and inaccessible. We cannot see them or feel them, which is why curative approaches are so elusive. We can debate this in the Chamber until the cows come home, but that debate will not bring the cure, so we must decide what politically we can do to help. I welcome the £32 million boost to brain cancer research, and our new approach to clinical trials. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur) for his Rare Cancers Bill, and I congratulate him on getting it to advance so far. Like me, he is a new Member of Parliament, and I am in awe that you have managed—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

He has managed—not “you”.

[Peter Prinsley]

Yes, I am in awe that my hon. Friend has managed to achieve so much; you see, Madam Deputy Speaker, I am a new Member of Parliament!

Let us encourage clinical trials, for as Lord Vallance has said:

“Clinical trials are the route by which promising research can be turned into treatments”,

which will save lives.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Johnson]

My right hon. Friend invites me to speak outside my area of expertise; I am afraid I do not know the answer to that.

[Peter Prinsley]

Will the shadow Minister take an intervention?

[Dr Johnson]

I will, particularly if the hon. Gentleman has an answer for my right hon. Friend.

[Peter Prinsley]

I cannot understand how there can be a relationship between head injury and brain tumour. Repeated injury causes some neurological conditions, particularly for footballers, whom we see getting early dementia, but I do not see a connection between head injury and brain tumour. Does the shadow Minister?

[Dr Johnson]

It is certainly something that I have read about. I am happy to be corrected by the hon. Gentleman if he feels that my resources are incorrect, but that was certainly one of the suggestions for how to prevent these tumours. I do not think that prevention will necessarily be the major way in which we improve the survival rate. I also do not think that it will be early diagnosis, but I would like to finish talking about that. Regular screening for people with genetic disorders can really help to identify tumours early, and the second thing that can help is access to diagnostic tests. The Conservative Government introduced community diagnostic centres across the country, which increased the number of scanners available to those who needed a scan to identify whether they had a brain tumour. This Government have said that they will double the number of scanners available. Can the Minister comment on whether they are on track with that?

We need the workforce plan, so that we have the people to perform and interpret the scans. I do not know whether the Minister has had any tips on whether the workforce plan is imminent, but can he give us a date for when it is likely to be published? It has been delayed, but it is important. We have the cancer plan, but so much of it is dependent on the workforce plan. Thirdly, opticians have a role to play. Since a South Tees project pioneered in 2015, opticians have been able, during regular eye tests, to identify people who have signs of brain tumours, and to refer them, when necessary. Encouraging people to get regular eye tests may contribute to early diagnosis.

The fourth thing that can help with early diagnosis is symptom awareness—among both the general public and healthcare professionals. I want to talk about HeadSmart, a 2011 programme about the types of symptoms that could help identify a brain tumour. It had quite significant cut-through with both healthcare professionals and the public. It halved the time for a scan, and for diagnosis of children with brain tumours. It also improved the cognition of survivors, but it did not significantly improve the survival rate. While early diagnosis helps a bit, it is very difficult—particularly in children, who are quite neuroplastic, so symptoms appear quite late. The location and type of tumour are more important in the treatment and prognosis, and there are many different types. That makes this area of medicine extremely complicated, so I think the answer is that we need better treatments.

Treatments currently include steroids, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery, but there are many others with promise. Convection-enhanced delivery enables chemotherapy to be delivered across the blood-brain barrier more effectively. Many hon. Members have talked about freezing, and last month there was a debate on the topic of freezing brain tumour samples; does the Minister have an update following that debate? His colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton), said that she would look at the detail and report back, so I hope that he will have an update for us this evening. Gene therapy has also shown a lot of promise, and there has been talk this evening about the trial in which an adeno-associated virus is used as a vector to seek out the glioblastoma cells and use the patient’s immune system to kill the tumour cells. That trial has promise; if it works, it could lead to real improvements in treatment.

Research will be key. BioNTech’s 2023 partnership promised that there would be 10,000 patients in cancer vaccine trials by 2030, but new innovators face barriers. This is a global fight; work is going on right across the globe, and we need to make the UK’s environment one that stimulates and supports research, so that British people can have the earliest possible access to the newest treatments. At the moment, the wider economic picture for research is not great, and we have seen some researchers pull out of investments in the UK. Taxation, national insurance, employment rules and the speed of adoption by the NHS are all factors that I hope the Minister will try to improve.

The hon. Members for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon) talked about the devolved Administrations. Could the Minister comment on how he and his team are working with those Administrations to encourage research right across the United Kingdom? I also wanted to talk about rural areas, because it is all very well encouraging trials in the UK or England, but so many of those trials are in the centre of London, or in the other big cities; it is much more difficult for people living in rural areas, such as my constituents in Sleaford and North Hykeham, to access them. Could the Minister please update the House on how he is making it easier for research to occur in rural spots?

The hon. Member for Witney summed it up perfectly when he said that ambition is important, but actions, not words, are the key. We need specific, measurable targets, not just warm words—this Government have been very good at warm words on health, but much poorer on delivery. For the sake of the one in two people who will get cancer, and all their friends and loved ones, I hope that on this occasion, there is more action, not just words.

National Cancer Plan

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

Thursday 5th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Ashley Dalton]

The trust to which the right hon. Gentleman refers is the trust where I had my primary cancer treatment, so I am acutely aware of the challenges. We have set a really clear and simple ambition: to get cancer patients the timely care they need, and to meet all waiting time standards by the end of this Parliament. That means that by March 2029, 80% of patients will get a diagnosis or the all-clear within 28 days, and 85% of patients will start their treatment within 62 days of referral. Some people have asked me why the figure is not 100%. It is not possible to make it 100%, because not everybody’s cancer is simple or easy to identify, and sometimes it takes longer. We want to ensure that the only reason for delays beyond 62 days is the complexity or specifics of someone’s cancer, not the inability of a trust to meet the targets.

We are going to cut waiting times by giving trusts and cancer alliances detailed practical information and granular data on individual cancer types so that we can highlight real-time pathway insights through a federated data platform, and by streamlining the cancer metrics so that we can shine a light on unwarranted variation in care. We are providing information and best practice, thereby taking the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS. We are linking up professionals and clinicians across the UK, so that they can share their best practice. Trusts can help and support each other to reach the targets.

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

What a brilliant plan, and I congratulate the Minister on bringing it to the House this afternoon. However, cancer trials need clinical academics, and we have a crisis in clinical academic recruitment, retention and funding. Does she agree that we must find ways to encourage young clinicians into academic and research roles?

[Ashley Dalton]

Yes, I do agree, and we are working on that. We are establishing the cancer trials accelerator programme to increase the speed, scale and reliability of cancer trials, and we will use the new health tech access programme to make it quicker. We will also be supporting the development, through the workforce plan, of all the clinicians required, including academics.

Medical Training (Prioritisation) Bill

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 27th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

I welcome the Government’s plan to change the law. It was obvious to me and to others that such a change would be needed, and it was one of the matters about which the newly elected doctors spoke to Ministers last year.

Imagine, Madam Deputy Speaker, that you have graduated from a medical school, excited at last to be called a doctor, and looking forward to finally getting to work after years of intense study, uncountable examinations and fierce competition. When this happened to me at Sheffield medical school, our early pre-registration posts were organised by the university. We were simply distributed around the local hospitals. We were in familiar locations, with our classmates and consultants who knew us. We began, rather hesitantly, to work as doctors, but suddenly we had responsibility for life and death.

However, something changed. Now young doctors are simply sent by chance, with little notice, to a region of the country they have never visited. They are far from their friends. Ironically, they are now called resident doctors, but that is the very last thing they are; the residences have long since disappeared. The shift system replaced the on-call rotas, and the doctors’ mess disappeared, so hot food was no longer available. Now, if they are lucky, they have an office chair in which to rest, and a sandwich dispenser in a cold corridor. They have no friends nearby, nowhere to live, and nothing to eat at night. It is not really the best start, and these are the young doctors on whom your life may depend. We really must do something to look after the health workers who look after us—all health workers. That does not just mean paying them properly, although we obviously must do so. Today we are speaking about our doctors, for young doctors face a very uncertain future.

After Brexit, many of our European doctors just left. The deficit was filled, as so often in the past, by doctors from the rest of the world. Especially in hospitals that are remote from medical schools—such as my hospital, the West Suffolk hospital in Bury St Edmunds, and the hospital where I worked for so many years, the James Paget hospital in Great Yarmouth—we have always depended on brilliant doctors from many nations, many of whom have become my long-term colleagues and some of my best friends. Immigration rules were altered after Brexit, effectively enabling applicants from across the world to apply for a very limited number of posts. As we have heard, although competition is healthy, it is certainly not healthy for the ratio of applicants to posts to go from about 2:1 to more than 4:1. As we have also heard, this is absolutely the cause of the bottlenecks. UK graduates simply cannot progress and are obliged to repeat years, often as unstructured and unrecognised clinical fellows. They leave the country or give up medicine altogether. The Government have rightly recognised that this must change.

Medical training is a continuum, and the end result is a general practitioner or a hospital specialist—by the way, I much prefer “specialist” to “consultant”. Doctors have five or six years of undergraduate training, and eight to 10 years of postgraduate training, and it makes no sense to graduate so many students and then fail to accommodate them in postgraduate training. The measure to prioritise the graduates of UK medical schools is simply common sense and I support it, alongside, I understand, almost all Members of the House.

Finally, let me issue a word of warning. The number of new medical schools—I understand that there are many new medical schools, including the one in Cumbria, which I did not know about—means that we have more graduates than ever. That is good, because we have insufficient doctors, but the health system must create additional training posts, more substantive posts for general practitioners and hospital specialists, and incentives to create these posts, especially in general practice, so that our new neighbourhood health centres, which I like to call “Bevan health centres”, can be fully staffed and open late at night, and so that we see an NHS renewed. That is our aim, and we will achieve it.

Less Survivable Cancers

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. I thank the hon. Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones) for securing this debate. Cancer remains a most feared word. We doctors have learned to use all sorts of other words: “growths”, “tumours” and suchlike. There are relatives who will tell us, “Don’t use that word in front of the patient, for it would simply kill him.” But things have changed. Cancers that were considered incurable are now curable, and cancers for which there was no treatment are now treatable. Such is the power of scientific progress, for it is upon science that we will depend.

What exactly is a less survivable cancer? It is one defined by persistently poor outcomes across all stages. Many have mentioned the six with a survival rate at five years of only 16%. One such example was my lovely neighbour, who presented last Christmas with loss of vision in one eye. He was found to have secondary lung cancer in the retina. It was completely incurable and unamenable to any effective treatment. Sadly, he was dead within a few weeks.

Our country has a proud record of medical research. After all, it was here that we first discovered the link between cigarettes and lung cancer, when epidemiological studies of British doctors were conducted in the 1960s. When that was revealed, my own dad gave up his pipe. The greatest act of our new Government, some 60 years later, was to continue with the legislation introduced by the last Government to ban cigarette sales, eventually, for every citizen.

Clinical academics are doctors who not only teach the next generation of doctors, but translate scientific research into clinical applications and the supervision of clinical trials. I did an MD at the University of East Anglia on the clinical observation on the genetics of a rare ear disorder, so I understand the difficulties of medical research, but also the intrinsic delight that comes with unravelling the mysteries of medicine. That role is particularly critical for less survivable cancers, where progress will depend on sustained academic leadership on converting research into viable treatment.

Unfortunately, there has been a serious collapse in the number of clinical academics in our country. Many are now approaching retirement, and the levels of recruitment of young clinical academics are completely insufficient. We must address this crisis, starting with co-ordination between the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Education, so that salary equivalence is restored to retain the existing workforce on which our medical science depends. Let us do something we can actually do to make survivable cancer survivable. This is our political task.

Community Audiology

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

Thursday 18th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) for securing this interesting debate, and I declare a series of interests. I am an ear, nose and throat surgeon, so I have been interested in audiology for 40 years. In this place, I chair the deafness all-party parliamentary group. Until I came here, I was the chair of the Norfolk Deaf Association, which is also called Hear for Norfolk, and I will say a bit about that as we go on. I have worked overseas dealing with patients with hearing loss, and I have been a specialist ear surgeon for 30 years or so. Audiology has really been much of my life.

As many Members have already said, deafness is a hugely common problem and is often much neglected. The statistics that have been cited regarding the percentage of elderly people who begin to develop hearing loss are quite familiar to me. What happens is that couples age together, but they might not always appreciate that fact. There is the story of the man who decides to test his wife’s hearing. He comes up behind her and says, “Mavis?” There is no response, so he says, “Mavis”, then “Mavis!”. She turns around and says, “For the third time, what is it that you want?” It is very familiar to me that many elderly people have hearing loss.

As I think has already been said today, about 2 million people in the country use hearing aids. There are probably about 6 million people in the country who would benefit from a hearing aid and probably about another 2 million hearing aids that are in drawers; they have been distributed to people, but are simply not used. Some people have a lot of hearing aids. They come in and say, “I’ve got all these hearing aids. None of them are any use, doctor.”

The story of NHS hearing aids is that we started with great big cream-coloured plastic boxes with little plaited wires that led to earphones; some of us will remember children at school who had those. Then, of course, the so-called BE hearing aids came later. When I was a young ENT surgeon, I never knew what “BE” stood for. A few years later, somebody told me that it just stood for “behind the ear”. Those were analogue hearing aids and they were quite good. They were extremely inexpensive and were distributed in their millions in NHS hospitals, which is how we ran hearing aid services.

Then, about 25 years ago, digital hearing aids were invented. They were not immediately available in NHS hospital clinics, because they were a little more expensive, so they started to be distributed by private hearing aid providers that sprung up all over the place. Members will know that in many high streets there is an audiology service and in the window there will be one hearing aid in a little box on a felt cushion. Curiously, hardly anybody ever goes in and out of those services. The reason is that those companies do not need to sell many hearing aids to stay in business because of the difference in cost. The digital hearing aids provided by those private providers often cost in the thousands, so they need to sell a hearing aid only once or twice a week to stay in business. At first, those hearing aids were a bit better than the ones we could provide in the hospitals.

Some time later, we began to distribute digital hearing aids through the NHS, which was brilliant. People would come to me and ask, “Do you think I should get a private hearing aid?”, and I would say something like, “Well, you can get a private hearing aid, but it is a bit like a hi-fi.” Someone can go to Argos and get a hi-fi or they can go to Bang & Olufsen and get a hi-fi. There is a big difference in price and they do actually sound quite different. I would say to people, “The hearing aids that we can give you are like John Lewis hearing aids; they are pretty good, and they are good enough for most people. I don’t think you should go and spend £4,000 on two private hearing aids. You should have the hearing aids that I can give you for nothing in my NHS clinic, because most people will be very happy with that.”

That was the model we used until a particular Government came along—I cannot remember which one—and decided that we ought to have something called the “any qualified provider”, or AQP, system. Suddenly, all sorts of people could provide hearing aids willy-nilly. We had a different acronym for it: “any willing provider”. Anyone who wanted to provide hearing aids could do so because, as has been said, there was not a particularly close supervisory mechanism. I have a feeling that anybody could set themselves up as a hearing aid provider, if they wanted to. We had this completely variable system in which some people spent large amounts of money on hearing aids that they kept in a drawer, and some people received hearing aids for nothing from hospital services.

That was how we went on, until somebody mentioned earwax. As some people may remember, general practices used to remove earwax with large stainless steel syringes that had a spout on the end. Those procedures were done by nurses until about 2012 when it stopped being part of the GP contract. There was a problem with the syringe: the little stainless steel nozzle on its end could become a bit worn, so it would not be completely connected. As a result, when somebody pushed the syringe, the stainless steel nozzle could fly off into the ear. I have repaired numerous eardrums over the years that had been smashed by syringing, so that system was not completely without its problems. Of course, we had aural care nurses in hospitals looking after patients and coming to take out their earwax, or if a patient had undergone an ear operation, the nurse would have to clean out their mastoid cavities.

We then, however, began to see all sorts of community providers of earwax services, sometimes set up by people who had been nurses in ear clinics, and sometimes set up by somebody from another occupation—they could have been a Member of Parliament who decided that they were now going to do earwax removal. There was a fee to be gathered from this, and some people did fairly well from removing earwax, but the provision was of very variable quality.

I would like to talk about Hear for Norfolk, or the Norfolk Deaf Association, which I chaired for quite a few years before I came here. It is a community-based audiology service that employs qualified nurses who have previously worked in NHS hospitals, and they perform what we call aural care, which includes removing earwax. People can just turn up to have that done; if they are referred by their GP, it is free on the NHS as there is a contract, or they can pay £50. We have vans that go around the district into nursing homes and small villages to do that work.

We now have a contract for hearing aid provision from the NHS, meaning that our not-for-profit charity provides thousands of hearing aids and treats thousands of patients in a community-based setting. I think that such a model could be developed and rolled out around the country so we have community-based, county-wide, not-for-profit aural care services that provide hearing aids.

I am not confident about simply distributing the contracts for hearing aid provision to a whole lot of private providers—Specsavers is one but there are many others—because the quality of their services is variable, and there will always be an incentive to provide private hearing aids. If someone walks into a service, they will be told, “Well, you can have this NHS hearing aid, but you know what? You could have this private one.”

[Sir Edward Leigh]

The hon. Gentleman is giving an absolutely brilliant speech. It is such a pleasure to hear a Member of Parliament speaking from direct, personal experience. I want to emphasise one important point that might come out of this debate: a lot of people are paying a lot of money for private hearing aids, but I know from personal experience that, nowadays, NHS hearing aids are perfectly satisfactory.

[Peter Prinsley]

I could not agree more, given the number of people who have come to me with handfuls of hearing aids on which they have spent thousands of pounds, telling me that they are just not working—and there is no proper follow-up for many of those people.

The issue with a hearing aid is that it needs to be looked after: it has a mould, it has batteries and it needs cleaning, so there needs to be an arrangement for follow-up. That is the sort of thing that an organisation such as the Norfolk Deaf Association, or Hear for Norfolk, is able to provide—it knows that that needs to happen. We need to be cautious about the quality of community audiology provision. We must not think that just because we are distributing it to respected private providers such as Specsavers, we are necessarily doing the right thing.

It has rightly been said that there is no national lead for audiology. Audiology is in a pickle, and it would be brilliant to get a proper national lead for audiology in the Department of Health and Social Care. There are issues with shortages of audiologists, but when questionnaires ask which healthcare professionals—or even which professionals—have the happiest lives, audiologists come out right at the top. Audiology is a particularly lovely occupation because people come in deaf and you send them out hearing. You hardly ever make them worse; it is not like going to the dentist, where it hurts. There is really nothing not to like about doing audiology, and it is a very interesting career, so I would like us to think of ways of encouraging people into it.

There is a bit of a confusion between medical practitioners and audiologists. The right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) referred to the issues relating to how we recruit medical practitioners from overseas. I am not aware that we are recruiting large numbers of audiologists from overseas; I actually think that we are not, although we did have audiologists who came from the EU when we were members of it. We can train enough of our own audiologists, but we need to get on and organise it.

I could talk about this for the rest of the day but it will be Christmas soon, so I shall sit down. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip again for securing this important debate.

[Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Vickers. This is an important debate, secured by the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales), but it is quite something to have to follow an eminent and experienced ENT surgeon, the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley), when speaking about hearing and hearing loss—especially as I am just a rudimentary vet.

It is quite common that people bring in a dog that they assume has hearing loss because it can no longer hear its name being called in the park, yet for some reason it can still hear a treat packet or a fridge being opened in another room. On comparative anatomy, the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket may be interested to hear that one reason why up to 20% of a caseload in a day of treating small animals can be on ear-related issues is that in humans the ear canal goes straight to the eardrum whereas in dogs it bends around 90° before it gets to the eardrum. Around that corner it is often quite warm and moist, and a lot of bacteria and yeast grow in those conditions.

[Peter Prinsley]

I am very interested in the story of dogs and the shape of a dog’s ear canal; that is such a helpful explanation. I was often brought dogs, particularly spaniels with big floppy ears, who had ear infections and blockages, and I was always puzzled why it was that the dogs got into such difficulties. The hon. Gentleman’s explanation of the right angle at the bottom of the ear canal is so helpful and I thank him for it.

[Dr Chambers]

I am honoured to have educated an ENT surgeon. Spaniels do have worse ear problems, given that there is a lack of airflow, and one thing that vets can get experienced at is taking a swab so that we are not using unnecessary antibiotics or inappropriate antibiotics. With a bit of experience, it is fairly easy to smell the difference between Malassezia yeast, pseudomonas bacterial infection or streptococcus intermedius—to anyone who thinks being a vet is glamorous, I say, “Spend a day sniffing ears to determine what type of microbes are down there, and it will change your mind.”

It is very interesting that many Members spoke today about the impact of hearing loss on dementia. We know that dementia is multifactorial—there is no single cause—but certainly my father had hearing loss for a long time, and he developed dementia. Hearing loss certainly affected his quality of life, dementia aside. He lost the confidence to go out to socialise and barely left the farm unless he had to. We are pretty sure that a significant factor in that was that he felt he could not hear what other people were saying. He could not perform business at the market as he used to, because markets are very noisy places.

The Father of the House touched on the fact that one in three adults have either deafness, tinnitus or some other type of hearing issue. What surprised me was that only 38% of people who suspect that they have hearing loss themselves have contacted a professional about it. I read that stat and was quite surprised, but I then realised that for years my partner Emma and other family members have often said, “Why do you have the TV so loud?”. I have also often noticed in a pub everyone else is talking, and I find it really hard to hear the conversation over any external noise, yet I have never gone along and had a hearing test. Quite clearly, I do not hear as well as everyone else in my vicinity, so I should probably get one. That could be a new year’s resolution for me—to go and work out whether I actually have some kind of hearing issues as well.

I also note the weight given to the importance of community audiology, especially when such a high percentage of hearing loss is age-related. Those people have no need to go to a hospital to get the initial assessment, and community audiology could free up hospital time for children and other people with more acute hearing issues that need to be investigated. Audiology is one of the worst performing diagnostic services in the NHS for speed of assessment, with 40% of patients waiting more than six weeks simply for the initial assessment. That is one reason respondents to the British and Irish Hearing Instrument Manufacturers Association are advocating for open self-referral and expanded community clinics simply to minimise those delays. Delivering audiology services in the community costs 15 to 20% less than from a hospital, so it is an economically sensible model as well.

We often call for more community-based services for a whole variety of medical issues to keep costs down. It should be the default for most people with age-related hearing loss. We also urge the Government to consider trialling hearing tests as part of routine health checks for people over 70 and at-risk groups and to investigate how best to support everyone, from GP surgeries to high street pharmacists and opticians, to deliver free earwax removal. They are already being successfully run by some GP practices with positive impacts on health outcomes, and the cost can be small, especially where GPs co-ordinate to pay for a service that covers a large area.

Resident Doctors: Industrial Action

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I will say to the right hon. Gentleman that we are doing everything we can to mitigate against harm during the proposed strike dates, but I cannot in all honesty and integrity assure him that no patient will come to harm next week should the strikes go ahead, because the situation is so dire. I really urge the BMA to reflect on that overnight and into tomorrow and to ask themselves—perhaps their members will also ask this of their reps—whether it is really necessary to strike next week, given the offer of an extension to mandate.

To the right hon. Gentleman’s final point, when I was the president of the National Union of Students, I was once asked by a Labour member of a Select Committee that I was appearing before whether I was speaking for my members or for my activists. There is sometimes a difference between the two. I know that lots of people have campaigned hard for pay restoration and that many people are involved in the Doctors Vote campaign in pursuit of that aim. I think there are many doctors, however, who recognise that there has been real progress on pay and that what we are putting forward now is meaningful progress on jobs, too. I say to all members of the BMA: do not let the perfect be the enemy of good, especially when the stakes are so high.

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

I congratulate our own frontline team, because this is a great deal. I came to Parliament partly to speak up for our NHS, and I have spoken in many debates. I have also trained many surgeons over the years, and I know that my fellow surgeons will be up for this deal. College presidents will support it, and I urge all resident doctors to support it, too. I will just issue a word of caution from my son, a resident doctor, who is up there in the Gallery: if we increase the number of trainees, we will also need to increase the number of consultants and GPs. If we do not do that, we will simply push the bottleneck down the road.

[Wes Streeting]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the need to address bottlenecks and to do adequate workforce planning. He draws attention to his son, in the Gallery, who is a resident doctor and no doubt a voter—it is almost tempting to break the rules and start appealing to voters in the Gallery for a yes vote in the survey.

I would say one thing to any resident doctors who are watching, and not just the immediate members of my hon. Friend’s family. I do listen carefully to what resident doctors say and how they feel, so I know there will be some who are listening to my hon. Friend and thinking, “It’s all right for you and your generation—you’ve had it easy. We are fed up with these consultants and college presidents telling us what to think and feel.” I hope that they know the extent to which my hon. Friend has fought their corner and spoken up for their concerns—not just on the Floor of the House, but in meetings with Ministers. He keeps us anchored in the sentiment and experiences of all parts of the profession, especially resident doctors. I know that my hon. Friend feels a real commitment to ensuring that resident doctors have a bright future and a bright career. I hope they will heed his advice, just as I do.

Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Ashley Dalton]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question and offer my best wishes to his constituent Ruth in her treatment. I thank him for bringing her story to my attention. I really do appreciate—perhaps more than most—the urgency of the matter. Although I am unable to comment on individual cases, I understand that one of my ministerial colleagues will be writing to the right hon. Gentleman directly on this matter in the very near future.

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

This week we learned about the incredible results of the Galleri trials, which allow the early identification of many tumours by looking at DNA circulating in the blood. Indeed, I was a volunteer in this trial. Will the Secretary of State join me in recognising the central importance of medical research?

[Ashley Dalton]

Absolutely. The new progress, particularly around circulating tumour DNA, is really interesting, and we are moving forward with more investment in research so that we can bring forward more such treatment.

Eating Disorders: Prevention of Deaths

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Mr Quigley]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important point—it does. The loss of a loved one is harrowing enough without the true cause not being recorded. That is why we are calling for a confidential inquiry into eating disorder deaths.

Given the concerns about under-reporting and inconsistencies in the data, it is even more alarming to read the findings from the Health Service Journal that revealed that between 2018 and 2023, 19 deaths related to eating disorders could have been entirely avoided. These tragic outcomes are attributed to severe failures in care, including missed or poorly managed safety risks, a lack of specialist knowledge among healthcare professionals and unacceptable delays in accessing appropriate treatment. If I were to ask for a show of hands in this room, I am sure many would be raised on that point.

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

As the MP for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket, I take a great interest in the progress of the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS foundation trust under the leadership of Caroline Donovan and Zoë Billingham, who I met recently in Parliament. Does my hon. Friend agree that early intervention is no more expensive and in many cases cheaper than delayed intervention, but is much more effective and saves lives?

[Mr Quigley]

I thank my hon. Friend for his extremely pertinent point. Early intervention saves not only lives but a huge amount in costs to the NHS.

I know the vast majority of NHS staff go above and beyond to support patients, often under immense pressure, and many of us here would like to put on record our thanks to them. However, these failures point to a systemic issue.

NHS 10-Year Plan

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I can give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that we are reforming the Carr-Hill formula and ensuring that funding is based on need. I am delighted to be working closely with the British Medical Association’s general practitioners committee on the reforms that we are making in this and other areas of general practice.

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

I welcome this brilliant plan. I particularly love the double helix that is featured on the front cover, because genetic discoveries have the greatest promise of all. If we all knew a little bit more about our health, we might all look after it a little bit better. Does the Secretary of State agree that the single patient record, with easy patient access, will be transformative?

[Wes Streeting]

Given my hon. Friend’s expertise, I am delighted that he has welcomed the plan so enthusiastically. I wholeheartedly agree with what he said. I give him 10 out of 10 for his product placement of the 10-year plan and, in particular, his remarks on the design of the front cover, which I will pass on to the team.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

Report stage
Friday 13th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Gregory Stafford]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am conscious of those comments and will try to limit my remarks to new clause 13 and some of the amendments to it.

The Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Royal College of Pathologists, the Association for Palliative Medicine and the British Geriatrics Society have all said that there are problems with this Bill, and I have heard nothing from its sponsor, the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater)—despite trying to intervene on her a number of times—about what she has done to ensure that their concerns have been addressed. This brings us directly to a fundamental concern: namely, the means by which assisted death would be carried out under new clause 13. The impact assessment for the Bill recognises that

“The safety and efficacy of those substances used for assisted dying is currently difficult to assess”.

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Member agree that the barbiturates that we are considering are conventional agents? They have been used in anaesthesia to cause loss of consciousness and suppression of respiration for generations. These are not novel substances.

[Gregory Stafford]

I obviously respect the hon. Gentleman, given his medical background, but as far as I am aware those substances have not yet been used for murdering people, which is what we are going to do here. That leads me neatly on—