Breast Cancer Diagnosis and Services: Covid-19

Stephanie Peacock Excerpts

Thursday 12th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Craig Tracey) for securing this important debate. He has spoken incredibly passionately and covered a wide range of issues relating to breast cancer. I want to focus my remarks on two issues. First, I want to speak about the need for a cancer recovery plan to deal with the backlog in breast cancer screening tests and get cancer treatments up and running again. Secondly, I want to speak about the need for urgent action to prevent the widening health inequality gap in this country.

Over the past few months, we have seen spiralling wait lists, the longest since records began. That has had a direct and devastating impact on people’s health. I have heard stories of frontline workers who have had their cancer screen test delayed, only to find out months later that their cancer has spread. It is a simple fact that the sooner someone has a cancer diagnosis, the more likely they are to survive. In March, breast cancer screening programmes were put on hold. One week into the second national lockdown, people are worried that that might happen again, and they fear for loved ones who might not get the care that they need.

In response to a parliamentary question that I asked, the Government revealed that nearly 10,000 women are waiting for a breast cancer screening in Barnsley alone, and more than 30,000 women in South Yorkshire. We have a postcode lottery in this country when it comes to breast cancer screening and mortality rates. Depending on where someone lives, they can be up to a third less likely to have attended a breast cancer screening in the last three years. Staffing pressures have directly impacted the capacity of the NHS to screen patients for suspected cancer, affecting the speed at which patients are diagnosed.

A Public Health England report found that the number of empty consultant breast radiologist posts in the country doubled between 2010 and 2016. The same report revealed that all breast radiologists in Yorkshire and the Humber are due to retire by 2025. Has the Minister’s Department assessed the impact of the pandemic on recruitment, and will she outline the Department’s plans to deal with the staffing crisis?

Health inequality in this country is not new. Life expectancy in Barnsley is five years lower than in Kensington and Chelsea. The pandemic threatens to widen existing health inequalities as areas such as mine face the double impact of more covid-19 cases and severe financial hardship because of the restrictions. As has already been mentioned in the debate, we need comprehensive, accurate data on patients and populations to map health inequalities across the country. This includes improving the cancer outcomes and services dataset so that patients and local providers can quickly and easily compare information on all cancers, including breast cancer. More needs to be done to support local providers to ensure they submit information to the dataset. It is the first step towards recognising the scale of health inequalities faced by this country and taking action to increase service improvement.

Covid-19 has not been a great leveller. Inequalities in care, treatment and diagnosis have come to light during the pandemic. At the same time, it is now widely recognised that societal inequalities have increased certain populations’ likelihood of suffering complications from the virus. It is clear that unless the Government act now to reduce the unequal impact of covid-19, those inequalities will become further entrenched, directly impacting the health and wellbeing of people across the UK.