Ankylosing Spondylitis

Michael Connarty Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) for allowing me to make a short speech.

When I was growing up, it was a role in my family that when the big brother went off to high school, the next brother was sent to live with my grandmother because she was in a wheelchair. She had always been in a wheelchair. Every morning, we had to get her up, and she was a big woman. She had been 6 feet tall when she was a young woman, and she had twisted feet and hands. We had to dress her in the morning, and it was difficult to do. I have memories of climbing on the bed, hauling her up and swinging her legs out to get her in the wheelchair, and getting her dressed. We did not know what it was—we just thought it was serious arthritis.

You may have recently heard me talk, Mr Speaker, about an uncle who was killed in McGurk’s bar. His sister is still living, and I go to visit her in Belfast. I have discovered that her son Joseph has had to retire from the civil service because he cannot move his neck at all. He explained to me that he had ankylosing spondylitis, and I had never heard of it before. He said that he had two cousins in the north—it is good that Members from Northern Ireland are here to listen to the debate—who were suffering from the same thing. He was diagnosed in his 40s, and he now knows that he will not be cured as he could have been if he had been diagnosed when he was young. Like my hon. Friend, he felt aches and pains, and he thought he was getting them from playing in the civil service football team, but it was actually the growth of the same problem in his body. Recently, a 38-year-old nephew, Paul, from Scotland, had a titanium hip joint replacement because the growth of the bone had basically broken his hip. Hon. Members talk about inflammation, but they seem to have a form of it that deals with bone growth. Their bones fuse early and grow in such a way that means they would end up cripples without treatment.

I fully endorse the campaign that my hon. Friend talked about, and I have spoken to the people from the National Ankylosing Spondylitis Society. One problem for my nephew was that he could not convince the people in the health service in Scotland that he had AS. In fact, he had a hip joint replacement that he might not have required if his AS had been diagnosed early enough and he had been treated for what I believe is a genetic disorder that runs in part of my family. Anything that the Government can do to make the matter a priority will save thousands, if not millions, of pounds and will save many people great pain.