Cancer Workforce and Early Diagnosis — [Mr George Howarth in the Chair]

Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 9:57 am on 8 January 2019.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Thangam Debbonaire Thangam Debbonaire Opposition Whip (Commons) 9:57, 8 January 2019

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Howarth. I thank my hon. Friend Jim Fitzpatrick and other hon. Members for their contributions.

I will focus on cancer affecting children, teenagers and young adults. As hon. Members know, I have personal experience of breast cancer, but more expert people in the Chamber will talk about that, so I will discuss the form of cancer for which I recently set up the all-party parliamentary group on children, teenagers and young adults with cancer.

I set up the group because each year in the UK, 4,450 children and young people under 25 are diagnosed with cancer—that is 12 children and young people every day somewhere in the UK. Four out of five of them will survive for five years or more, but for the parent of a child such a survival rate seems minuscule. Most of us expect our children to survive far longer than that, so the survival rate can seem quite hard. Those of us who have had adult cancer might think, “Oh good—five years! I’ll still be around in five years’ time.” For adults, that feels like a success; for children, not so much.

Cancer remains the biggest killer by disease of children and young people under 25 in the UK. That is important, because one of the reasons why cancer is the biggest killer is that other diseases have declined. That is a good thing, but cancers still affect many children. We want the incidence to decrease, and the number of children surviving and being diagnosed earlier to increase. The all-party parliamentary group wants things to be better. The Minister knows that, because he has been good to the group and worked closely with us. We understand that the small number of children affected can make it difficult to identify real specifics that could make a big difference, but because the number is small, some of the things that we want might be relatively straightforward to do.

Last year, we held an inquiry into young people’s experience of childhood and young adult cancer. We now call on the Government and the NHS long-term plan to look at the impact of a young person’s route to diagnosis. Recent research by CLIC Sargent found that more than half of young people had to visit their GP at least three times before their cancer diagnosis. Katie, the young woman who was a panel member in our inquiry, said that because childhood and young people’s cancer is so rare, GPs did not expect to see it, so frequently signs and symptoms were misunderstood. I have the greatest sympathy for GPs and clinicians, and because those cancers are so rare, we would like a training and e-learning module for healthcare professionals.

CLIC Sargent and the Teenage Cancer Trust have teamed up to create such a module on the signs of cancer in children and young people, developed in partnership with the Royal College of GPs. We would like more support in the NHS workforce to improve recognition of the signs, whether that is the e-learning module or something different. I hope the Minister will say something about that when he sums up. In the NHS long-term plan published yesterday I was really pleased to see a specific mention of childhood cancer, but I was disappointed that there was not more emphasis on skilling up the healthcare workforce to recognise the signs and symptoms. We all know that often the consequence of failing to make an early diagnosis is a very poor survival rate.

In our inquiry we recommended many measures, which the Minister has very kindly agreed to go through with his officials and respond to in some detail. Perhaps after the debate, will he liaise with my office about a time to meet? I am grateful to him for his willingness to do that, but we would like to make some progress in the first half of this year. Some of our recommendations are relevant to this debate. We say that the Secretary of State for Education should ensure that every young person receives health education that includes cancer signs and symptoms, done in an appropriate way. The Teenage Cancer Trust has developed an education module, which many of us will have seen recently when it was demonstrated in Parliament. I would like to see something such as that being used.