Tessa Munt
Main Page: Tessa Munt (Liberal Democrat - Wells and Mendip Hills)Department Debates - View all Tessa Munt's debates with the Leader of the House
(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Sir George Young
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. If he looks at the coalition agreement, he will see that we made it absolutely clear that once an e-petition got 100,000 signatures it would be “eligible for debate”—I think that is the wording—so there is no question of my or anyone else’s misleading anyone about that. His suggestion that there should be extra time specifically for e-petitions is a helpful one. He will know that the Procedure Committee is reviewing the parliamentary calendar and that we are committed to reviewing the work of the Backbench Business Committee. It may be that those two reviews work together in tandem and that we are able to find extra space within the calendar to debate e-petitions. I know that this is an issue on which the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee has strong views.
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
The Government’s cancer strategy for England recognises that access to radiotherapy is critical to improving outcomes. Radiotherapy takes only 5% of the estimated total NHS spend on cancer care but 50% of patients can benefit from it. May I ask the Leader of the House whether he has seen and supports Cancer Research UK’s “A voice for radiotherapy” petition, which has been signed by more than 36,000 people and will be handed in to Downing street this afternoon? As 2011 is the year of radiotherapy, may we have an urgent debate this year on better and fairer access to radiotherapy in England?
Sir George Young
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the profile of Cancer Research UK’s petition. I agree that it would be helpful to have a debate and to see what more we can do to reduce any delays in the use of radiotherapy or, indeed, chemotherapy once people have had their operation. There will be an opportunity at Health questions to raise this issue quite soon but, in the meantime, she might like to put in for a Westminster Hall debate so that we can do justice to the important issue she has just touched on.