Endometriosis Services

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Highgate) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Jack Abbott), who shows that it is not necessary to be suffering from endometriosis to be an endo warrior. We champion it because it affects everyone—people in the workplace, our mothers, our sisters and our friends—so I am very grateful that he has brought this debate to the House. I know he has had to try a few times to secure it.

I have not suffered from endometriosis myself, but I have come here to speak about my brave constituent Sanju Pal, who is in the Public Gallery. After six years of fighting a legal battle, she won a landmark case against her former employer for unfair dismissal at the employment appeal tribunal in London. I am proud to say that her case sets a legal precedent for endometriosis to be considered a disability under the Equality Act 2010. I hope Members will bear with me as I tell her remarkable story. The truth is that not everyone should have to fight a legal battle for six years to get their just desserts, but Sanju—a Camden girl—managed that.

In 2018, Sanju was diagnosed with severe endometriosis. She had large fluid-filled cysts on both ovaries, which required an immediate operation. She returned to work a month later in severe pain. She could barely walk and had heavy bleeding because she had pushed herself too much to make promotion to senior manager. She took evidence to HR and told them how much pain she was in, and she was ignored. After three months of a phased return to work, she was sacked without warning. She was told to leave the building and not to contact anyone else. She had worked there for 10 years, and she was told to just walk out the door without telling anyone where she was going and why she had been sacked.

Sanju was sacked on a technicality: she was not ready for promotion within a required timeframe. It is known as an “up or out” policy, and it is used by many corporates. Employees can be dismissed if managers feel that they cannot be promoted within a certain timeframe. The termination letter Sanju received within minutes of the meeting she had did not actually state any reasons for her dismissal. It did not inform her about the right to appeal or refer to the policy that was being followed. She took it to an internal tribunal, where the High Court later found that the panel had completely disregarded the impact statement she had written for the meeting. The internal tribunal ruled that Sanju had not proved that her illness had an ongoing substantial effect on her daily life and stated that many women with endometriosis had no symptoms or mild symptoms, so it could not be taken seriously.

The tribunal initially rejected Sanju’s claim of disability discrimination and lacked any understanding of the physical impact of endometriosis on a woman’s body. She appealed that decision, and the High Court eventually ruled that she was unfairly dismissed from her job without her employer following a fair capability procedure or providing reasonable adjustments for her in her workplace after she was disabled by a condition over which she had no choice. Since her unfair dismissal in 2019, employers must follow the judgment on considering endometriosis as a disability and have to provide reasonable adjustments in the workplace.

I am very proud of my constituent’s tireless campaigning, but I go back to what I said: not everyone should have to go through the mental trauma that Sanju endured for six whole years while she fought this battle, and I do not expect them to. Workplaces should provide reasonable adjustments. It is shocking to me that not a single gynaecological condition is included in the disability guidance for the Equality Act and that although endometriosis can be classified as a disability, it is not automatically recognised as such. That basic change could have saved my constituent time, effort, mental anguish and the anxiety that she told me crippled her life for so long.

Countless other women across the country who are disabled by endometriosis are not given reasonable adjustments in the workplace. For example, in 2024, a Barclays banking analyst was required to work up to 48 hours a week while suffering from endometriosis because her line manager refused to allow any reasonable adjustments at her workplace. She told me that she now lives in Romania with her parents because she cannot afford the medical treatment and is unable to work because of that ordeal. One in 10 women suffer from endometriosis and 69% of sufferers say that they face discrimination at work. Cases like that are too common.

Women should not be forced to go to tribunal just to get the rights they deserve. That is why I want to push the Minister, who has been championing women’s rights for as long as I have known her, which is a very long time. Women should be given specific workplace conditions and the right to reasonable adjustments in their workplace. Endometriosis should be listed under the recurring and fluctuating impairments in the guidance for the Equality Act so that employers actually understand their legal duty to provide reasonable adjustments for women.

Beyond those important changes to the workplace, there is more for the Government to do to ensure that women suffering from this terrible condition get the rights they deserve. For a start, we urgently need better data on the women diagnosed with endometriosis in the UK. The statistic I quoted of one in 10 women having endometriosis, which many people will have read, is from studies in 2009. Indulge me for a second, Mr Dowd, while I talk about what happened 17 years ago. That was before we knew what coronavirus was. It was before Brexit, when we were still in the European Union. It was before my children started saying “six-seven” at every opportunity. It was before I had to go to the hairdresser every week to dye my hair. Surely we need an update to the data to find out what is happening to women now. We cannot rely on statistics for women’s health from 2009. We are better than that as a Parliament.

Only when we truly understand the scale of the issue can we adequately tackle it. If we do not have the right data, we will not be able to tackle it. The provision of services for endometriosis needs to be strategically planned, and it has to have location data. As a London MP, I know the advantages that exist in London. We have to look outside London so that this does not become a postcode lottery for women. [Interruption.] There was a cheer there because most London MPs do not say that, but I thought I would say it. We need to have a greater understanding of the parts of the country that have greater need.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

With what the hon. Member has just said about having a greater understanding, does she agree that, while we all have to play a role, the British Medical Association could help by ensuring that the many GPs across the United Kingdom have a greater awareness and understanding of the need?

[Tulip Siddiq]

I agree with the hon. Member. One of the things that has struck me is how few people actually understand what the condition is. I was having a conversation with someone who I would say is a fairly well-informed man, and he said to me, “I thought it was just a heavy period.” He said that because no one had ever talked to him about it. Medical professionals need to have a better understanding, but we need to have a better understanding generally of women’s health conditions overall.

Does the Minister have plans to improve the data collection of women with endometriosis, and, if she does, how does she intend to utilise the data that comes forward? There is a lot more that I could say about the training in the Department for Work and Pensions on assessing disability benefits for women with endometriosis. There should also be a mandate that employers have a gynaecological health policy and human resources training.

There are others who want to speak, so I will round up by saying that the fact that only 11% of employers in the UK have a menstrual health policy is a shocking statistic. For me, it highlights that there is widespread discrimination against women with these health conditions. For as long as our employment rights ignore the gynaecological conditions of millions of British women, the injustice will continue. I applaud Sanju for her legal battle, but I do see it not as just a victory for her. It is a victory for countless women who are suffering and have not had the ability to go through that legal battle.

I have not touched on the fact—although it will be obvious to many people—that I am from an ethnic minority background. Growing up in the household that I did, I never heard the words “menopause” or “endometriosis”. It is not that women around me did not suffer from those conditions; there was a stigma attached to them and it was taboo to talk about women’s health problems. In 2026 we have got to tackle that, and ensure that women from south Asian backgrounds talk to their daughters about it. They must tell them, “If you are suffering, please don’t suffer in silence, because this isn’t something to be ashamed of.”

Sudden Unexpected Death in Childhood

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this debate on what is an incredibly emotional topic. It is difficult to imagine parents having grief beyond what he is describing. On the research, does he agree that while no guarantees can be given, if Governments put more money into it, families will understand that and will see progress and, we hope, a better outcome?

[Andy MacNae]

Precisely, and that would be to treat this issue with the importance, urgency and focus that it deserves. The very fact that most research is now charity-led is quite revealing.

This research includes the Pioneer study—a population-based investigation to reduce sudden unexplained deaths in childhood—at the University of Bristol, which is beginning to analyse national mortality data and incorporate family-led research priorities. Science has advanced: genomics, cardiology, neuropathology and data science now offer real hope that the causes that were once thought unknowable may finally be within reach. However, scientific possibility alone is not enough. Findings from the UK’s Pioneer study, alongside the growing body of global evidence on SUDC, must be properly considered and applied. They should inform linked datasets and guide action by organisations such as Genomics England, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, the National Institute for Health and Care Research, the Department of Health and Social Care and the NHS.

The opportunity is there, but right now we rely far too much on this limited charity-funded research. If we are ever to shift the dial, as the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) said, we need a national plan delivering co-ordinated, planned actions that enable and accelerate meaningful projects.

NHS Capital Spending

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Bobby Dean]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I am sure that, like me, he hears constituents say that they do not want to attend their local A&E because they do not trust that they will be seen in time. I am sure that the figures he is describing are an undercount of the people who should be in there. Like me, he will have received emails about corridor care for some time. I had hoped that corridor care was a peak crisis moment and that it would subside, but it has become the norm and that is extremely worrying. It is not acceptable for patients, it is not fair on staff, and it is not a sustainable way to run our NHS.

If the Government are to reconsider which schemes should be in which waves of the new hospital programme, let me assure the Minister that my local trust is ready to go. Plans have been drawn up, land has been secured, and teams can move at pace. We need this, we want this, and we are ready. If that is not possible, but other pots of capital to be reallocated still remain, I make a separate plea: extend St Helier’s emergency department now. That is a smaller ask than delivering a whole new building, but it will make a big difference. The only thing more full than the corridors at my local hospital right now is my inbox, which is filling up with constituents describing their traumatic experiences.

St Helier hospital emergency department sees around 250 patients a day, with routine overcrowding leading to the trust being placed into national oversight measures. Kirsty, one of my constituents, was left anxiously waiting for her 83-year-old mum to be seen, witnessing elderly patients crying, vomiting, screaming and walking around in severe pain in the corridors. The father-in-law of Muhammad, another constituent, waited over 13 hours only to return home without seeing a doctor at all. Others have shared deeply personal details of their stories; their conditions were explained to them alongside countless others in the same corridor. It is undignified, unjust and unsafe.

The trust has come up with a plan. It believes that it can redesign the existing estate, creating a new urgent treatment centre and expanding the same-day emergency care service. By doing so, it would dramatically increase the number of patients it can see. The urgent treatment centre would be able to handle up to 30% of patients—up from 14%—and SDEC could get to 20%, up from 8%. That would prevent unnecessary overnight stays, free up hospital beds, speed up ambulance transfers, and reduce delays for patients needing hospital admission. The plan would also address £15 million of the trust’s ageing estates backlog. It is immediately deliverable; the trust believes that work can begin as early as autumn 2026. It would make an incredible difference, so I ask the Minister to make use of any influence she has over the matter to help the proposal get over the line.

Before I conclude, let me raise one further point about NHS capital expenditure that I suspect will not make me popular, but that I believe is right. The Government have tentatively re-entered the world of public-private partnership models with their announcement of neighbourhood health centres late last year. We all know how disastrous that model of financing was in the past, with the long-term costs to the taxpayer far outweighing the short-term benefits. Britain was among the first in the world to pilot such a scheme, and it failed fast.

It must be said, however, that other nations have learnt the lessons of our failures and successfully delivered social infrastructure at scale, on budget and on time. Indeed, I believe that is one of the reasons why we have fallen behind so badly. As a member of the Treasury Committee, I recently guested on a Public Accounts Committee inquiry into PPP, which concluded that if we get procurement, contract management, and the risk allocation of projects right, then we can massively accelerate the delivery of infrastructure in our country in a way that delivers real value for money for the taxpayer.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing the debate. To summarise what he is saying, we need to better spend the money that is currently being deployed in the NHS. Does he agree that this has to be the underpinning feature going forward? More and more money has been poured into the NHS; we all think it is a fantastic organisation and praise those who work in it, but we need to spend that money better and modernise the monolith that is the NHS.

[Bobby Dean]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman, who hits on one of the central points of this debate. We can continue to pour money into the operational side of the NHS, but if we do not get the capital expenditure right and improve the equipment, systems and buildings, we will always be pouring good money after bad.

I know that PPP is fraught with political risk, particularly for a Labour Government who are scarred by what happened in the past, but I urge them to look at the National Audit Office’s report and the experience of others internationally. They should also listen to the NHS Confederation, which is pushing them to go further and experiment with different financial models for delivering the infrastructure that we need at scale.

NHS capital has been insufficient, uncertain and inflexible for far too long. The new Government have good intentions to improve on all three, but now is the first moment at which we can start to look at their delivery. After what I have outlined today, I would like to put several questions to the Minister. Will she update us on the current level of capital underspend under this Government? Where in the system is the underspend occurring, and what is being done about it? Will the Government allow trusts to carry forward any unspent capital to future years? Will that exist beyond the current spending review period? What assessment has the Department made of the delivery of the new hospital programme, and will any schemes be reconsidered for movement between the waves? Will the Minister outline whether the Government plan to reform the capital allocation system to allow multi-year planning and reinvestment of trust surpluses permanently?

The NHS cannot function without modern, safe and efficient infrastructure. No Government can deliver improvements in performance or productivity without addressing the capital crisis at the heart of our system. I urge the Minister to use this moment to reset the capital regime and put it on a footing that prioritises long-term investment, accelerates delivery and gives patients and staff the facilities they need and deserve.

Advanced Brain Cancer: Tissue Freezing

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Wednesday 7th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Dame Siobhain McDonagh]

My hon Friend is absolutely right. Let us be absolutely clear: there is no route for an improvement in any of the rare cancers unless there are more trials—and the system mitigates against that. There is a lot of talk at the moment about the Government of stakeholders. The stakeholders involved in drug trials—the major pharma companies and cancer charities—do not get involved in these trials because for pharma there is no money in it, and for the big charities, there seems to be more interest in primary science and mice work than there is in using some of these amazing drugs to find out whether they can provide some sort of support to people with rare cancers.

It is the lack of treatment options, and this inaction, that led me, alongside my sister’s extraordinary network of friends and supporters, to launch our own trial in her memory. When the system does not move quickly enough, patients and families are forced to take matters into their own hands. We have an established clinical trial now under way at the University College London Hospitals clinical research facility with encouraging early indicators, a wider trial programme mapped out and further trials ready to follow with protocols written.

We are seeking to clarify how to secure the funding needed to repeat and extend this work using alternative drugs, so that more patients can benefit. We continue to raise funds to support that goal.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

Yesterday the hon. Member outlined the tremendous work being done to privately raise about £1 million for research. Does she agree that that needs to be supplemented and complemented by statutory funding to make the dramatic difference that she, and hopefully all of us, agree needs to happen?

[Dame Siobhain McDonagh]

I completely agree with the hon. Member. Anything that we have raised—£1 million over two years—is a drop in the ocean. It is an important drop in the ocean, and it has led to action, which is what we need, but in the longer term, it has to be the Government and the pharmaceuticals that are not intervened on if we are to make progress.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Western. I thank the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Chris Evans) for setting the scene so incredibly well, and the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh) for all that she does—I was impressed by her contribution yesterday, and she equalled it today.

I think we all know someone who has been touched by cancer. The youngest daughter of a close friend of mine was diagnosed with glioblastoma last Christmas, and she died a few weeks later. At that time, the diagnosis was bleak, and the lives of my friend and his wife were changed forever. Bleak does not even come close to the sense of loss.

[Mr Campbell]

I have personal experience of a very young constituent who lost her father for the exact same reason. The trauma affects not just the immediate family, but close friends too, and it lives with them for years. Hopefully, we can see some progress both today and in the next few weeks, whenever the cancer issue is addressed in the main Chamber.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank my hon. Friend. That story makes today’s debate that bit more impactful for me and for us all. My friend is a veteran. He served in the forces with great courage. He has shoulders as broad as a rugby player. He is a man who could take on anything. He laid his life on the line for the freedom of everyone here. Yet, he could do nothing but watch—

Less Survivable Cancers

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Clive Jones]

Yes, that was the Minister calling me to apologise. [Laughter.]

I asked the Committee for the debate six months ago, but having it one month before the probable publication of a national cancer plan is not a bad date for it. I also thank the less survivable cancers taskforce, Cancer Research UK and Myeloma UK for their help and guidance in securing and preparing for this debate.

As I have mentioned many times here and in the main Chamber, I am a cancer survivor. The experience has shown me how important early diagnosis and effective treatment are to our outcomes. My diagnosis was delayed, because I was sent away by the first GP I saw and had to wait several months again before being diagnosed with breast cancer. Fortunately, my treatment was successful, but many others are not so lucky, especially those with less survivable cancers.

Every year in the UK, 90,000 people are diagnosed with a less survivable cancer—cancers of the brain, liver, lungs, pancreas, oesophagus and stomach. Together, they represent 40% of all cancer deaths and account for 67,000 deaths every year. The less survivable cancers have been overlooked for far too long. While many other cancers have seen major advancements in survival, survival rates for those six cancers have remained staggeringly low for the past 25 years. The collective five-year survival rate for those cancers is just 16%. The sad reality for the 90,000 people diagnosed with one of the cancers is that 75,000 will not survive more than five years. That is a school play someone will not see, a set of exam results that they will miss, or a first day at university, a graduation, a significant birthday of their own or of a loved one, or the birth of a grandchild that someone will not see.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate, in particular given his personal circumstances. He rightly outlined the need for early diagnosis. Does he agree that that is particularly true of those of us who are males, who sometimes have an extreme reluctance to go to a GP to ascertain what might be wrong? That needs to be addressed urgently.

[Clive Jones]

It does. The more that people like me and others who have survived cancer talk about it, and about our experience of a delay and having the cancer spread, the more that will help others to come forward.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I join my hon. Friend in commending Lord Cameron on his openness. Raising awareness, as we know, encourages men to come forward and leads to more diagnosis. He has done a great public service in talking about his own experience. We are improving care for men diagnosed with prostate cancer and undergoing active monitoring or treatment. We will be introducing support for individuals who are on prostate cancer active monitoring pathways to enable them to order and complete prostate-specific antigen blood tests at home from 2027. As for screening and the case being made for targeted screening, I await the recommendations of the National Screening Committee. We will study those carefully. We know that this is contested within the sector, so it is important that we have an evidence-based discussion, thrash out the arguments and reach the right way forward.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s indication that he is awaiting the outcome of that report on screening for prostate cancer. If that report recommends what many of us hope it will recommend, will he act quickly to develop the report’s recommendations, whatever they are?

[Wes Streeting]

We are expecting the draft recommendations, and then a three-month consultation period will follow, but I want to act quickly on the evidence and what the recommendations contain, not least because we know that as well as it being a prevalent form of cancer, some groups—particularly black men, men with a family history of prostate cancer and men with BRCA gene mutations—are at higher risk. Black men are twice as likely to die with prostate cancer than white men. There is therefore an imperative to act. Whatever the recommendation, we need to do much better on diagnosis and treatment of this terrible condition.

Obesity and Fatty Liver Disease

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Tuesday 28th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dr Beccy Cooper (Worthing West) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered obesity and fatty liver disease.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford, alongside my parliamentary colleagues who have kindly come along this morning to debate and highlight the public health emergency that is obesity and fatty liver disease.

The vast majority of us do not often think about the health of our livers. If we do, our biggest concern is how many units of alcohol we drink every week and whether our livers can keep up. But we do talk about our weight a fair amount, either in terms of how we look and how our clothes fit, or, if we are linking it to disease, whether we are blocking up our arteries and risking a heart attack. Today I want to make the case for linking our concerns about being overweight and sedentary with the very real risk of developing fatty liver disease. Before I give the alarming statistics about the huge increase in liver disease in the UK, I want us all to hold on to the fact that a weight loss of 10% can halt and even reverse fatty liver disease progression, and the way to help us all to do that is not to point fingers and tell individuals to try harder. There are much more effective public health solutions than that.

Now for the alarming statistics that should give us all pause for thought: after heart disease, liver disease is the biggest cause of premature mortality and lost working years of life in the UK. In stark contrast with other killer diseases where the mortality rate has gone down, deaths from liver disease have increased by 400%—yes, 400%—over the past two decades. Every year we are seeing 18,000 deaths from liver disease. It is now the biggest killer of 35 to 49-year-olds in the UK. In two to three years it is set to surpass heart disease as the leading cause of premature death in the UK.

Today’s debate matters because fatty liver disease is becoming one of the defining public health challenges of our generation—a disease that already affects as many as one in five adults in the UK, equating to about 1 million people, but one that hardly anyone knows about. When I asked my parliamentary colleagues to speak in today’s debate, they said, “Fatty liver disease? What’s that?” So hopefully this debate will highlight this alarming disease.

Closely linked to our ongoing struggles with obesity, fatty liver disease—for the record, its clinical name is metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease; that is the last time I am going to say that today—is deeply rooted in our broken food systems and the stark health inequalities that our communities face.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. She is outlining very clearly the importance of the issue. It is vital that people are aware of it. Does she agree that if we do not deal with the issue, the NHS waiting lists over the coming years will be compounded even further than they have been already?

[Dr Cooper]

I thank the hon. Member for making that excellent point. He is absolutely right. The issues of the NHS waiting lists are pertinent and stark. Reducing them will mean that we have to get the left shift right as well as invest in acute services.

Our policies have failed the population for decades. This debate is an opportunity to make the urgent case for a national liver strategy, joined-up public health work and profound reform of the conditions that stop us all living well. Because we have failed to build an environment where healthy food is affordable and accessible, two thirds of UK adults are now overweight or obese, and one in three children in England are above a healthy weight when they leave primary school.

Fatty liver disease is a silent killer, often asymptomatic until at a very advanced stage, meaning many patients are diagnosed too late for effective intervention. Left untreated, as too many are, fatty liver disease can progress to liver inflammation, fibrosis, cirrhosis, liver failure or liver cancer. Fatty liver disease also increases significantly the risk of heart attacks, stroke and heart failure. It is projected to overtake alcohol as the leading cause of liver transplants within a decade.

How do we treat fatty liver disease? Despite high and rising mortality rates, there are limited treatment options for patients with this disease. As I have said, weight loss and lifestyle change are essential.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

Some progress has been made in the early diagnosis of prostate cancer. Will the Secretary of State ensure that when the further progress that we all hope to see is made, it will be shared quickly and efficiently with the devolved regions?

Oral Answers to Questions

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

I know that this subject is close to my hon. Friend’s heart, and I pay tribute to him for his work on it. We recognise the devastating impact that an eating disorder can have, and the earlier the treatment is provided, the greater the chance of recovery. The Department continues to work closely with NHS England, which is now refreshing guidance on children and young people’s eating disorders. I commend the work of Beat, and I would be happy to discuss this further with my hon. Friend.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

The eating disorder issue is escalating, as the Minister rightly points out. Will he agree to hold discussions and consultations with the devolved structures in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, so this issue goes to the top of the list of issues that have not really been dealt with in the past but need dealing with now?

[Stephen Kinnock]

We remain in close contact with all our colleagues in all the devolved Administrations. I will certainly be following up with officials as we develop the research programmes that we are working on, and as we integrate eating disorders into the broader work we are doing around mental health. Getting 8,500 more mental health workers and creating Young Futures hubs and mental health crisis centres is just some of the work that this Government are doing on this important issue.

Glaucoma Awareness

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2025 Westminster Hall

[Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered glaucoma awareness.

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship for the first time, Mr Pritchard. I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for attending this important debate. First, I declare my registered interest as a practising optometrist for the NHS. As an optometrist for many years, I have had the privilege—sometimes the heartbreak —of looking into the eyes of people whose lives are changing without their even knowing about it. Fundamentally, that is what glaucoma does: it changes lives quietly, and often without warning. Last week was Glaucoma Awareness Week because many people are not aware of the condition.

At this point, I applaud the work done by Glaucoma UK to raise awareness of the condition. It is known as “the thief of sight” for very good reasons. Broadly speaking, glaucoma damages the optic nerve. The optic nerve is made of millions of little nerves and bundles, and each part of the nerve represents a single point in our visual fields. Because vision loss begins at the edges, people do not often realise that anything is wrong until it is too late.

I would like to give two brief but real examples from my experience. First, a woman came into my practice who had been hit by a car, while in her own car, from the side, not once but twice. She came in and read out the bottom line—the tiniest letters that can be seen—and could not understand why she kept missing things on the side: in this case, cars. It became apparent that she was a quite advanced sufferer of glaucoma, and she had lost the majority of what we call peripheral or side vision. Another memorable patient was a gentleman who was brought in kicking and screaming by his wife because he kept knocking off the salt, pepper and ketchup from the dinner table. It became apparent, again: he could see everything clearly straight ahead, but he really could not see anything on the side. He also had a very advanced form of glaucoma.

Glaucoma is the leading cause of preventable blindness in this country, with over 700,000 people affected, but the shocking thing is that more than half of them—350,000 people—are undiagnosed: they are walking and driving around not knowing that they have the condition. They could be one of us—somebody we love, or somebody we work with, as was the case of a former Member of Parliament of this parish, Paul Tyler, a Lib Dem Member, who was diagnosed at a completely routine eye test. In his own words, he might not have been able to carry on his duty as a parliamentarian if he had not gone for a simple eye test where they detected glaucoma. Twenty-five years later, his sight is still preserved.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. He rightly alludes to the issue of regular eye testing. Although we obviously want a response from the Minister, does he agree that if nothing else is achieved from this debate but raising people’s awareness about doing exactly as he recommends—and all of us recommend regular eye testing—to detect conditions such as glaucoma, he will have done us all a service?