Cancer Strategy for England

Roger Gale Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Sir Roger Gale (Herne Bay and Sandwich) (Con)]

I do not want to go down the road of party politics. The previous Government poured shedloads of money into the national health service, but throwing money at the problem is not the answer. I am not saying that there is not any demand for more capital expenditure—there is—but that is not the point. Unless we get the structure right, we will go on wasting more and more money. We need to be grown up about this; we must all understand that.

In the few minutes I have, I want to concentrate on an issue that the hon. Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones) touched on, but only briefly: the incidence of cancer in young people. It is many years since my eldest son used his wedding—and probably his bride too—to raise money for the Teenage Cancer Trust. In the time between then and now, sadly not a very great deal has changed. That is lamentable. The point was made that, every day, seven young people between their teenage years and their mid-20s are diagnosed with cancer. By the end of this decade, that figure is likely to have risen to 10 per day.

Most of us in the Chamber probably have family members who have had experience of cancer—or even have personal experience, as the hon. Member for Wokingham clearly has. We all know somebody who has had cancer, and sadly some of us know, only too well, people who have died of cancer. But the instances of cancer among young people are widely disregarded and neglected within the health service and beyond. It is not infrequent for a young person, subsequently diagnosed, to have to make at least three visits to a general practitioner before even being referred, because it is assumed, completely wrongly, that cancer is something that affects old people—people like me. I am expected to get cancer, but young people do not get it, do they? Well, sadly, yes they do, at a rate of seven a day, rising to 10 a day by the end of the decade.

My plea is for the Minister to take away this message: however much money is being pumped into the health service and being made available for investment in diagnostic kit, there is a real need to address one area of the population that has been neglected. That area is teenage cancer victims. It is the largest single killer of young people in this country—bar none—yet young people are overlooked when it comes to clinical trials that could be lifesaving. There is a real reason why young people as a proportion of the population should be included in clinical trials, but they are not—they are overlooked. Why? Because there is the assumption that it is not a disease that affects young people. But it does.

I make my plea on behalf of those in my family who support the Teenage Cancer Trust, and those in the Teenage Cancer Trust who have taken the trouble to brief Members of Parliament. I ram home this message to the Minister and ask him to take it away to the Secretary of State: when we set up, as I am sure we will, a national cancer strategy, the Government must make certain that the 13-to-25 age group is given the recognition it deserves, so that they get the diagnoses in time, before they die, and the treatment they need, and so they are included in clinical trials.

[Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)]

I call Noah Law.