Covid-19 Update
Grahame Morris Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Matt Hancock
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Getting the right geography for any particular action is an important and difficult consideration. Last week’s example, when we took two of the Teesside boroughs into local action but not the other three, demonstrates that we are absolutely prepared to do as my hon. Friend wishes for London. On the other hand, on the same day we took the whole of the Liverpool city region into the same measures, because that was what was appropriate there. We have to take into account travel patterns and socialising patterns, as well as the pure data from the epidemiology and the number of cases, but it is absolutely something that we look at because we want to minimise the number of restrictions that are in place, subject to the need to keep the virus under control.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
The Secretary of State is full of bravado and bluster, despite a catalogue of mistakes and regular statements. When the truth is spread thinly, people start to see through it. We hear the expression “world-beating test and trace system”—how would Ricky Tomlinson describe it?
Covid-19 Update and Hospitality Curfew
Grahame Morris Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Matt Hancock
Of course, as we keep this under review, we will consider all the options. The clarity of the rule that was brought in was one of the reasons that it commends itself, but I would be happy to talk to my hon. Friend about the future.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
We all agree that suppressing the virus is essential in saving lives, and as a scientific socialist, I think we should apply basic public health principles. It seems absolutely clear to me that it is problematic that we have a 10 o’clock curfew, when large numbers of people are all coming out into the street at the same time. Night-time entertainment businesses such as comedy and live music venues, which are based in covid-secure premises such as pubs and clubs, are seriously impacted, and like—
Coronavirus Response
Grahame Morris Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Matt Hancock
I will do better than that: when we get scientific evidence on the impact of cold weather on this virus, we will publish it.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab) [V]
I hope the Secretary of State is aware of the tragic case of Kelly Smith, who sadly died when her cancer treatment was stopped during the covid lockdown. The Government’s aspiration to get cancer services back to normal by the end of the year is simply not acceptable. Too many cancers are incurable within a few weeks. Will he address this issue, and will he look at transforming radiotherapy services, which have emerged as being highly effective as a cancer treatment and can be delivered even if there is a second spike in the pandemic?
Matt Hancock
Yes, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about the importance of this. We are getting cancer services back up and running as fast as possible. The idea that we are waiting until the end of the year before doing anything is completely wrong. We are going as fast as we can. During the peak, some of the services did have to be stopped for clinical reasons. My heart goes out to those whose treatment was stopped because of covid and who died of cancer, The judgments were made on an individual clinical basis as to whether it was safer to go ahead with the treatment or to stop it, because, of course, many treatments for cancer are much more dangerous when there is a high volume of infectious disease. I understand that that explanation will be of no comfort to Kelly’s family and friends who mourn her, but I also understand why the NHS made that decision and I support them in the decision that it made. We must get this going again as fast as possible. This is something on which I am working very closely with the NHS. In fact, I had a meeting on it only last week. I also entirely agree on the point about radiology services, too.
Oral Answers to Questions
Grahame Morris Excerpts(4 years, 3 months ago)
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Matt Hancock
My hon. Friend is spot on. We are driving interoperability so that the right people can see the right records at the right time. We will mandate that technology used in the NHS must allow for such interoperability, and we will set standards.
My hon. Friend started the “axe the fax” campaign, in which I was happy to play my part. Faxes are terrible for efficiency and for data security—even straightforward email is so much better—and we will drive up data security by axing the fax across the NHS.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
What specific investment is being directed to supporting the 11 new radiotherapy IT networks that are required to provide a world-class radiotherapy service and improve cancer outcomes and survivability?
Matt Hancock
Radiotherapy is a good example of part of the NHS that can benefit hugely from improved technology now and from the cutting-edge artificial intelligence-type technologies that are coming down the track. I am happy to look at any specific proposals the hon. Gentleman has. We have a broad programme to support the technology needed in radiotherapy.
NHS Funding Bill
Grahame Morris ExcerptsMonday 27th January 2020
(4 years, 3 months ago)
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Matt Hancock
Yes. That just shows how sensible the British people were to elect a majority Conservative Government. The funding will also allow the NHS to invest in innovative technology, such as genomics and artificial intelligence, to create more precise, more personalised and more effective treatments. That will help the life sciences industry, which is one of our fastest growing industries, and in turn, help to support growth.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
I want to make a point about new technologies and what is not in the Bill—namely, capital and training budgets. That is vital to address our woeful performance on cancer outcomes, which I want to touch on in more detail later. Specifically, what will the Secretary of State do about the under-investment in advanced radiotherapy? We are spending £383 million but we should be spending considerably more if we are going to provide a world-class service.
Matt Hancock
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that we need earlier diagnosis of cancer—I entirely agree. Rolling out the 200 extra diagnostics facilities and increasingly making them available in the community, rather than just in big hospital centres, is an absolutely mission-critical part of that. The funding will also allow us to upgrade our outdated frontline technology—that is tied to what he just called for—which will save time for staff and save the lives of patients. Within the financial settlement, mental health spending will increase the fastest so that we can transform how we prevent, diagnose and treat mental ill health across the country. Within that allocation, funding for children’s mental health will go up faster still.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dover (Mrs Elphicke), who made powerful arguments in support of improving maternity services in her area, as well as other hon. Members who made their maiden speeches this evening. I am sure that we will hear a lot more from them.
I want to make a familiar argument about access to and funding of radiotherapy services. The Minister for Health, the hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), has heard this argument on previous occasions, but I am going to make it again because I am not convinced that the Secretary of State understands it. It is not rocket science: in the United Kingdom, radiotherapy accounts for just £383 million of the NHS resource budget, despite the fact that one in four of us is going to need it at some point in our lives. In his opening remarks, the Secretary of State referred to the Government’s commitment to invest in new diagnostic equipment and scanners. I very much welcome that, but he did not seem to get—I did not hear the penny dropping—the important link between diagnosis and treatment.
I must declare an interest: I am vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on radiotherapy. I am a cancer survivor myself and have benefited from this particular treatment. Basically, I want to make three points. I want to cover the cancer challenge, to briefly discuss the current state of radiotherapy and to set out a future vision for NHS radiotherapy. I am talking in the context of the Bill. I have tried to make key points in interventions about how vital workforce planning and capital budgets are. This is not just a case of replacing hospital car parks; it is about vital equipment. It is essential to improve cancer outcomes for our patients.
About 50% of people develop cancer at some time in their lives, and I am sure that even those fortunate enough to be spared the disease will all have a loved one who has been touched by cancer. I am not arguing from a completely selfish point of view, here—putting a case for me, my constituency or my region. As a magnanimous sort of individual who recognises the sentiment in the House, I am arguing that we should improve cancer services across the whole country. Access to world-class cancer treatment really matters to every single one of our constituents in every constituency in the United Kingdom.
I want to take issue with a statement that the Secretary of State has made on more than one occasion about cancer survival rates. Figures comparing nine comparative countries were published in The Lancet in November last year, just before the election. They showed that the United Kingdom had the lowest survival rates for breast cancer and colon cancer and the second lowest for rectal cancer and cervical cancer. Some 24% of early-diagnosed lung cancer patients are not getting any treatment at all.
In truth, although our cancer survival rates are improving—the Secretary of State is not telling a lie—we still have the worst cancer outcomes in Europe; the baseline is very low. I welcome the Government’s commitment to considering ways to improve cancer diagnosis, with a plan to set new targets so that patients receive cancer results within 28 days. That is great. But we still need to address issues of staff capacity and there is a desperate need for more radiologists and more skilled people in the imaging teams to address shortages in endoscopy, pathology and the vital IT networks.
Unlike chemotherapy, which I have also had on a couple of occasions, which impacts the entire body with chemicals, advanced radiotherapy targets tumours precisely, to within fractions of millimetres, limiting damage to healthy cells in close proximity to the tumour. Improved radiotherapy technology allows us to treat cancers previously treatable only with surgery, chemotherapy or a combination of both. Radiotherapy is also cost-effective for patients, the NHS and Ministers, who are obviously very keen to ensure that we get value for money. A typical course of radiotherapy costs between £3,000 and £6,000—far less than most chemotherapy and immunotherapy cures—and patients experience very few side effects.
The problem is that access to radiotherapy centres and this life-saving treatment is not evenly distributed across the United Kingdom. A 2019 audit showed that 32% of men with locally advanced prostate cancer in the UK had been potentially undertreated, with 15% to 56% of trusts in the survey not offering the sort of radical radiotherapy that those patients really required. In England, advanced curative radiotherapy is actively restricted for no good reason, with only half the 52 centres having been commissioned by NHS England to deliver advanced radiotherapy—stereotactic ablative radiotherapy, or SABR. That is despite the fact that its use is specifically recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.
We are coming up to World Cancer Day on 4 February. The Minister understands this issue because we have spent a deal of time on it. I want him to make a commitment on behalf of the Government that the UK will become a world-class centre for patient-first radiotherapy so that we can improve our cancer survival rates. That will require an increase in investment. We need to address the issue of capital funding. Currently, radiotherapy gets 5% of the cancer treatment budget; we need that to be closer to the European average of 11%. There is an immediate need for £140 million of investment to replace the 50 or so radiotherapy machines—the old linear accelerators—that are still in use despite being beyond their recommended 10-year life by the end of 2019. We need investment in IT and to help establish the 11 new radiotherapy networks, which the Minister touched on. Again, that comes under capital and workforce training.
The all-party parliamentary group’s manifesto for radiotherapy is calling for a modest increase in the annual radiotherapy budget, from 5% to 6.5% of the revenue budget, and for the Government to establish some basic standards to secure our vision for radiotherapy. We need to recruit and train highly skilled clinicians, radiographers, medical physicists and healthcare professionals and to guarantee that every cancer patient has access to a radiotherapy centre within a 45-minute travel time. In 2020, the Government should set themselves a 2030 target for the UK to go from having the worst cancer outcomes to the best cancer survival rates in the world. We could do that, and we could make a start by delivering a world-class radiotherapy service.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I am afraid that I have to reduce the time limit to eight minutes.