Less Survivable Cancers Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department of Health and Social Care
Brian Leishman
Main Page: Brian Leishman (Labour - Alloa and Grangemouth)Department Debates - View all Brian Leishman's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(3 days, 5 hours ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Brian Leishman (Alloa and Grangemouth) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. I thank the hon. Member for Wokingham (Clive Jones) for securing this debate. Even though health is a devolved matter under Holyrood control, my contribution today will be from a Scottish perspective, because I want to speak about the situation of health inequalities that we have in Scotland and how it comes down, like everything does, to a class issue.
Shockingly, 61% of people in Scotland who are diagnosed with a cancer of the lung, liver, brain, oesophagus, pancreas or stomach die within a year of diagnosis. That is the poorest survival rate anywhere in the United Kingdom. In 2023, the Scottish Government implemented the 10-year Scottish cancer strategy, which outlined 11 ambitions designed to reduce cancer risk, provide faster and earlier diagnosis, improve cancer treatment, make cancer care fit for the future and reduce the differences exacerbated by health inequalities.
The most disadvantaged Scots suffer dire health inequalities. The most deprived areas face higher incidence. The largest gap relates to lung cancer, with risk almost four times higher in deprived groups. They also face later diagnosis, often at the emergency stage: people living in deprived areas are 50% more likely to be diagnosed via emergency admission and are thus far more likely to miss the earlier—and statistically the most successfully treatable—stages of cancer.
There are also considerable economic barriers. Socioeconomic conditions often contribute to lower symptom awareness and knowledge in the first instance, greater issues with accessing and attending appointments and a higher likelihood of exposure to harmful factors such as smoking, alcohol and obesity. Smoking is the biggest cause of cancer in Scotland, and we know that it is more common in the most deprived populations. In 2019, 32% of people in the most deprived populations smoked, compared with 6% in the least deprived. If we take being overweight and obesity together, it is the second largest preventable cause of cancer in Scotland. As with smoking, obesity rates are higher in more deprived areas.
I appreciate that it will take a huge joined-up approach across several Departments and cross-governmental working to reduce the shocking health inequalities in Scotland, but if the Minister could give an indication—either in her speech or perhaps in greater depth in a letter to me after the debate—of how the UK Government plan to do so, I would be very grateful, as would my constituents.