Covid-19 Response

Rosie Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd April 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

Yes; that is an incredibly important issue. We want to get non-covid-19 treatment back up and running as quickly as is safely possible. We are of course putting in place the arrangements to make sure that when people do go into hospital without covid-19, they are not infected by people who are in hospital with covid-19—that segregation is a very important part of our considerations. The answer to my hon. Friend’s question is that yes, within very short order we will start to restart the NHS. He asked about elective operations, which are an important part of the matter, but so too is people presenting themselves. It is important to give people the confidence to call their GP if they have a problem or, if it is urgent, call 111, because with cancer, for instance, we know that early diagnosis is critical, and I want people who think they have a risk to come forward for treatment.

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab) [V]]

In the statement today, and before the Health and Social Care Committee last week, the Secretary of State has implored cancer patients to come forward and assured them of treatment, yet since that Committee meeting I have been inundated with messages from all over the country from desperate patients whose treatment has been stopped, interrupted or not even started because of covid-19. What is the Secretary of State doing to ensure that there is no gap between his welcome words and what is actually happening? Can he guarantee that treatment will go ahead and give patients confidence that we have covid-free hospitals through the frequent and widespread testing of staff? Finally, will he ensure that death in service benefits will be paid for all healthcare workers who have died of covid-19, both now and retrospectively?

[Matt Hancock]

I would like to be absolutely clear—as I was at the Health and Social Care Committee meeting, which was a very good discussion—on the point about cancer treatment. There is some cancer treatment that it is clinically inadvisable to undertake during an epidemic like this, because if somebody’s immune system is taken down to very low levels, that puts them at significant risk, so I cannot give the guarantee that all cancer treatment would go ahead. Even though we now have capacity in the NHS and confidence that that capacity will not be over-capped by the virus, the virus is still at large in the community, so there are some cancer treatments, especially in relation to immunotherapy, that it is clinically inadvisable to undertake now.

Having said all that, yes, we do want people to come forward, and we want as much cancer treatment as possible to go ahead, where it is safe to do so considering the impact of the virus. That is why I want people to come forward if they have a risk, and we will treat them as best as we possibly can within the constraints of the fact that we have a very serious virus stalking the land.