I, too, thank Brian Adam for securing the debate. I also thank Macmillan Cancer Support for its excellent work. The central point that we are here to discuss concerns travel insurance premiums, but the debate offers an opportunity to acknowledge that nowadays many people who are diagnosed with cancer can recover and live full and active lives.

As Brian Adam said, the higher premiums for travel insurance that cancer sufferers face also apply to people who have, or who have had, other conditions, such as asthma.

I hope that Cancer Research UK and other cancer charities will inform insurance companies of the new statistics on cancer recovery, as there seems to have been a lack of awareness of cancer as an illness. Macmillan Cancer Support believes that the approach that insurance companies have taken to cancer probably relates to the significantly lower survival rates of decades ago rather than to today's survival rates. I welcome Macmillan Cancer Support's proposal that we urge insurance companies to ensure that their staff receive cancer awareness training. However, such training can be beneficial only if those staff have full knowledge of cancer recovery statistics.

When I did my research for the debate, I was surprised by some of the personal stories that I read. For example, a woman who is now in her 40s was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 17 and finished her treatment five years later. She has never had a recurrence of the illness, but was understandably shocked when she was informed that her history of suffering from cancer back in the 1980s would almost double her travel insurance premium. Fortunately, she had worked as a Macmillan nurse and was able to inform the call centre operator that the fact that she had suffered from Hodgkin's lymphoma decades earlier did not represent a risk, with the result that her quotation was vastly reduced. Unfortunately, others are not as lucky or as well informed, so it is imperative that insurance companies are aware of all the facts.

There is no doubt that quotations of £3,500 to £4,000 for travel insurance are extortionate. It is unfortunate that people who have fought an often long and painful battle against cancer still face situations in which they are punished by insurance companies for recovering.

I am pleased to use the debate to highlight the fact that, according to our briefing from Macmillan Cancer Support, a number of patients have found the good old Post Office to be the best provider of reasonably priced travel insurance cover for cancer patients. Given the threat of closure that hangs over our post office network, I hope that many more people will get a quotation from their post office, not only for their benefit, but to help with the retention of the post office network.

I reiterate my earlier point that cancer sufferers often endure years of treatment to overcome a disease that can kill, so when they are given a new lease of life, no further barriers that restrict the enjoyment that they deserve for beating cancer should be put in front of them.