World Cancer Day

Ruth George Excerpts

Wednesday 30th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[John Lamont]

I absolutely agree. We need to do much more to promote awareness of those conditions. I will come on later to the availability of drugs.

The Scottish Government recognise that the high number of vacancies is a problem, but missed their target for increasing the number of nurse endoscopists by 40%. In England, nurse vacancies are similarly too high. The availability of drugs is also an issue that concerns charities and patients alike. The most high-profile example is the breast cancer drug Perjeta, which was rejected for use three times in Scotland but was finally approved just a few weeks ago. Quicker and more cost-effective access to the latest and best treatments must be a priority in future.

I know that colleagues will want to press the Minister on what the UK Government are doing to tackle cancer in England, but all these issues need to be addressed across all parts of our United Kingdom. As a Scottish MP, I am conscious that the Minister is not directly responsible for the cancer waiting times and treatments for my constituents. However, UK-wide approaches should be taken to help us tackle cancer head on, together.

World Cancer Day is all about recognising that cancer knows no boundaries, and that individual Governments cannot address these challenges in isolation. That gives rise to the question: are the UK Government and devolved Governments working as well together on this issue as they should be? For example, should we buy some drugs and equipment on a UK-wide basis? Current practice is that four separate bodies approve new drugs across the UK. While that allows different parts of the UK to make their own decisions, surely a UK-wide approach would make sense in some cases. We could make ultra-orphan drugs more affordable or use economies of scale to deliver common drugs at lower cost.

I am therefore interested in the Minister’s views on this suggestion. Have there been any discussions with the devolved Administrations about this possibility? Are health boards across the UK as good as they can be at talking to each other and sharing best practice? Representing a constituency on the border with England, I all too often see examples of that border acting as a barrier to co-operation. I certainly hope that that is not the case when it comes to cancer treatment.

I hugely welcome the extra funding coming the NHS’s way, which will of course mean an extra £2 billion a year for the Scottish Government to spend on health, if they choose. Will the Minister outline what that means for cancer treatment in England, and how much of that extra funding will be used to improve treatment and reduce cancer waiting times?

Can we do more to support families with the cost of cancer treatment? Parents spend an average £600 a month in additional expenses as a result of their child’s active cancer treatment, much of that on travel costs. Young people in my constituency often have to make a 100-mile round trip to Edinburgh for tests and treatment. Children’s cancer charity CLIC Sargent is calling for a cancer patient travel fund, as well as a review of the disability living allowance and personal independence payments, to backdate young cancer patients’ financial support to their day of diagnosis. I certainly think that these are reasonable suggestions.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

As a parent who supported a child through cancer, I know at first hand how much a child going through cancer costs and the financial strain, as well as the emotional and physical strain, on parents and families. Universal credit does not take account of the cost of cancer; both parents often have to give up work to support one child in hospital and other children at home or at school. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is absolutely crippling for those families?

[John Lamont]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for sharing her experience. This all needs to be looked at. As I said, DLA and PIP should at the very least be backdated to the date of diagnosis. Additional support, particularly for parents like those in my constituency who have to travel such long distances to access treatment, should be factored into the calculation of how much they might be entitled to. We need to ensure that the system at least recognises those extra financial pressures.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

As I mentioned earlier, I have personal experience of cancer, both as a parent and a child; my mother died of breast cancer when I was five years old. From a very young age I have seen the impact of cancer on families. I have also seen treatments improve over the decades, from the time that my mother was suffering and had what appeared to me, at that young age, to be fairly rudimentary treatments, to what are now much more sophisticated treatments, which are available to children and adults in centres of excellence such as the Christie Hospital in Manchester.

The support has also evolved greatly. I pay tribute not only to the very brave people going through cancer, and their families who support them, but to amazing organisations such as Mummy’s Star, a national charity set up in my constituency to support families with children whose parent is dying or has died of cancer. It does amazing work counselling children and helping them through the process of treatment and grief, and often bereavement as well.

I also pay tribute to our hospices. Blythe House Hospice in my constituency has a brilliant “Breast Friends” group, which I have visited and spoken to. They are very brave survivors of cancer, often two or possibly even three times over. The support they get from the local hospice and community really helps them to keep going through the emotionally and physically gruelling trauma of cancer treatment.

We have very particular concerns in High Peak. At the end of last year, just after Breast Cancer Awareness Month, breast services for patients in north Derbyshire were withdrawn from our local hospital. As that is our nearest hospital, it was incredibly traumatic for patients and families, who were faced with possibly very long distances to travel for treatment. It is extremely difficult to drive and no public transport is available. That is exceedingly worrying for them, on top of the worry and trauma of their diagnosis and treatment.

Services were also withdrawn from gastroenterology patients in Macclesfield Hospital in north Derbyshire—our other nearby hospital. On both occasions, that was due to staffing shortages; there are 42,000 vacancies for registered nurses. I urge the Minister to look at the amount of investment that is going in to support not just the nurses, but the radiotherapists and radiologists who are so important in cancer diagnosis and care.

Early diagnosis is important for people’s outcomes. We do not want to see any more people than have to going through treatment, and we certainly do not want them to find out about their cancer at a late stage, when it is much more difficult for them to recover and when the prognosis is much worse.

I echo the comments of the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) about the costs of cancer. Again, universal credit is an extremely complicated system for people—not just the parents of children with cancer but cancer sufferers themselves—to go through. It took six hours at a computer for one young man, Neil, who is cited by Macmillan Cancer Support, to complete the claim form for universal credit while suffering from the treatment for a brain tumour. We are putting cancer patients through an absolutely sub-human system when they should already have as much support as possible.

I ask the Minister to speak to colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions about the strain and lack of support available to parents of children with cancer or to cancer sufferers in claiming universal credit. At the moment, almost one in five patients with cancer struggles to pay their bills, which should not be the case for people who need to put all their efforts and energy into getting well.