Minimally Invasive Cancer Therapies

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 24th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

The noble Baroness raises such an important point. Of course, the Government are committed to significant investment in research, but we cannot overestimate the work that so many individuals, companies and charities do in this space. I know that her personal experience is of giving them the support that they need.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, all new therapies require specialists to deliver them but, according to the Royal College of Radiologists, there is a shortage of both diagnostic and interventional radiology consultants. I accept that the specialist training takes six years, but the benefits of increasing that workforce are crucial to the Government’s objective of shortening waiting lists, as the Minister just suggested. What progress is being made to increase the number of those specialists? If there are logjams anywhere, what is being done to remove them?

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes an incredibly important point. It is not just in this area that we have shortages in specialisms. The Government are committed to creating a much better environment for resident doctors moving through the process into specialisms and to giving them support. There is a whole raft of work, which I cannot go into now, on how we can make sure that those programmes are smoother, speeded up and more equitably spread around the country—to pick up on the important point regarding this type of specialism.