Dame Siobhain McDonagh
MP for Mitcham and Morden · Labour · United Kingdom
“Q5. In a capital city still scarred by the loss of 72 lives in the Grenfell fire, we have a second equally flammable and deadly risk. In bedrooms and corridors across London, low-paid deliverers for Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats are charging the tools of their trade: lethal lithium e-bike batteries.”
“I am therefore delighted that NHS London announced up to £57 million to expand and modernise St Helier’s emergency department. However, that cannot be the end. St Helier needs renewal. Only days later, there was an announcement that disrepair in the women’s services block meant that it would have to close.”
“The walk-in centre at the Wilson hospital in Mitcham, which once treated patients every day until midnight, even on Christmas day, has gone. Out-of-hours GP services have been reduced. Those patients have not disappeared; they now go to St Helier.”
“A number of constituents who work as nurses in the A&E department at St Helier hospital asked me to come to see for myself what they were dealing with. They asked me to come late on a Monday morning, rather than a Saturday or Sunday night as I had anticipated. What I saw was deeply troubling.”
“St Helier hospital has the fourth best maternity unit in the country, the only exclusively NHS-run assisted conception unit in south-west London, and a specialist gynaecology ward where nurses are highly trained in counselling. Yet all that is set to close next May because of the need for emergency repairs.”
“I thank the Petitions Committee and my friends from Brain Cancer Justice, who I affectionately think of as the provisional wing of the all-party parliamentary group on brain tumours. In July last year, we launched Margaret’s trial at University College London hospital.”
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“I am therefore delighted that NHS London announced up to £57 million to expand and modernise St Helier’s emergency department. However, that cannot be the end. St Helier needs renewal. Only days later, there was an announcement that disrepair in the women’s services block meant that it would have to close. I am delighted that the chief executive of the hospital trust has said that those services will return. Nevertheless, the situation is a stark reminder of what happens when hospitals are expected to serve growing populations in ageing buildings that have been allowed to deteriorate for decades. Corridor care should never become normal in our NHS. My constituents deserve a St Helier hospital that is properly equipped to care for them when they need it most. I am determined to continue to fight for that.”
“The walk-in centre at the Wilson hospital in Mitcham, which once treated patients every day until midnight, even on Christmas day, has gone. Out-of-hours GP services have been reduced. Those patients have not disappeared; they now go to St Helier. If we want fewer people waiting in our overcrowded emergency departments, we must invest in the services that prevent them from needing to be there in the first place. That is particularly important in communities such as mine, where people are more likely to live with long-term health conditions and greater health inequalities. An A&E department cannot function in isolation. It depends on having the services, capacity and infrastructure around it to keep patients flowing safely through the hospital. That is why I have spent years campaigning for St Helier.”
“A number of constituents who work as nurses in the A&E department at St Helier hospital asked me to come to see for myself what they were dealing with. They asked me to come late on a Monday morning, rather than a Saturday or Sunday night as I had anticipated. What I saw was deeply troubling. Around 250 patients were coming through the department every day. Elderly people were being cared for on trolleys out of nurse sight lines. However, what really struck me was that packs of staff were wandering around A&E, with nowhere to do their job. They could not do their paperwork, sit near their patients or monitor anything. Corridor care does not begin in the corridor; it begins long before a patient reaches A&E. For years, community services and alternatives have gradually disappeared.”
“St Helier hospital has the fourth best maternity unit in the country, the only exclusively NHS-run assisted conception unit in south-west London, and a specialist gynaecology ward where nurses are highly trained in counselling. Yet all that is set to close next May because of the need for emergency repairs. Could the Leader of the House find time for a debate on those vital services, and whether they be temporarily relocated somewhere else on the St Helier site and returned to the current building on completion of the repairs?”
“I urge anyone who hears of anybody diagnosed with glioblastoma to consider our trial. It is for newly diagnosed patients pre-treatment. It is free. It is available. There will be excellent care. The trial will not only hopefully extend the lives of those who decide to go on it, but give us the information to find out how we can use repurposed drugs to treat this truly terrible cancer as early as possible.”
“I thank the Petitions Committee and my friends from Brain Cancer Justice, who I affectionately think of as the provisional wing of the all-party parliamentary group on brain tumours. In July last year, we launched Margaret’s trial at University College London hospital. Thanks to the donations of thousands of supporters and the work of brilliant researchers and clinicians under Dr Paul Mulholland at UCLH, we are testing whether immunotherapy before surgery can help newly diagnosed glioblastoma patients. It is exactly the kind of innovation that we need more of. I was not prepared to wait for the institutions that we look to for progress. We decided to do it ourselves, and that is precisely what we are doing. We have five people on the trial and space for 11 more.”
“Order. I point out to Members that this is an incredibly important debate, which is why so many of you are here today. I would ask you to be brief in your interventions, out of respect for all other Members who have something to say.”
“I remind hon. Members that they need to bob if they wish to speak. I want to be sure that I have a good idea of who wants to contribute, because we want to make sure that everybody has as long as they need to make their contribution. We will make that calculation now.”
“Order. Ms Spencer, I appreciate that you are very new to this House, and it is great that you are at this debate. I note that you will be making a speech later, and there will be time, but what you are doing at the moment is making an intervention, so it needs to be really brief.”
“If we are truly to modernise the NHS and remove the barriers holding Britain back, innovation and clinical research must sit at the heart of that mission. Britain has the talent, the institutions and the scientific capability. Now we need a system capable of matching that ambition, so that it is our country that stands at the forefront of innovation when the next generation of medical breakthroughs are discovered and delivered. For the families facing terminal illness today, that progress cannot come quickly enough.”
“Lord O’Shaughnessy’s review warns that Britain risks losing its world-leading position unless we become faster, more agile and more ambitious, and the warning signs are already there, with the UK falling from fourth to 10th globally for commercial trials between 2017 and 2021. The countries that lead the world in medical innovation will increasingly lead the world economically too. The global race for investment, talent and scientific leadership is intensifying, and Britain should not simply aim to participate in that race; we should aim to lead it. This is why the NHS modernisation Bill announced in the King’s Speech matters. NHS modernisation cannot simply mean changing structures; it must mean building a system capable of getting innovation to patients faster.”
“Lord O’Shaughnessy’s review into commercial trials found that countries such as Spain and Australia were consistently setting up trials more than two months faster than the UK. Too often, our clinical trials environment is still characterised by complexity, duplication and inertia, when it should be characterised by urgency. This is not a criticism of the brilliant people working within the NHS or our research institutions—far from it. Time and again, I have met exceptional clinicians and researchers working tirelessly to push boundaries and give patients more options, but I have also met clinicians who feel constrained by systems that are too slow to turn research into treatment for patients. Britain too often treats innovation as something to cautiously manage, rather than something to be urgently delivered.”
“That work has included establishing a new glioblastoma drugs trial in her memory, which is now under way at University College London hospitals NHS foundation trust and showing encouraging signs. In doing so, I have seen at first hand how difficult our systems can make it for innovation. What struck me throughout that process was that, even with funding secured and research ready, and with patients searching for further options, progress still becomes bogged down in systems that move painfully slowly. Glioblastoma is one of the most aggressive and deadly forms of cancer. At diagnosis, patients are told they have months left, not years. For those patients, delay is fatal.”
“From pioneering NHS research to fast-growing British techbio companies such as Relation Therapeutics, the potential for this country to lead the world in medical innovation is enormous. The challenge we face is not whether we have the talent or the capability to lead but whether our institutions are capable of matching the urgency of patient need. Too often brilliance collides with a system that moves cautiously when it should move decisively. In few areas are the consequences of that slowness felt more acutely than in rare and aggressive cancers. Since losing my wonderful sister Margaret to glioblastoma —the biggest cancer killer of children and adults under 40—I have worked closely with clinicians and researchers searching for a cure.”
“The King’s Speech set out this Government’s commitment to remove the barriers holding back Britain and to break through the failed status quo. Nowhere is that more urgently needed than in life sciences and medical innovation. Britain cannot become a world leader in life sciences while patients and researchers are trapped inside systems that move too slowly. This matters because behind every delayed trial and every missed opportunity are families running out of time. This country is uniquely placed to become a world leader in medical innovation. We have extraordinary scientists, extraordinary universities, and extraordinary clinicians. Our life sciences sector is one of the greatest strengths of the British economy.”
“Order. Mr Wrigley has asked me if he can sum up at the end of the debate—his chances were in his hands. Because the debate is so popular, I will now impose a two-and-half-minute time limit on contributions. I call Dawn Butler.”
“Order. May I just say that the hon. Member had very generous time allocated to him during this debate? If the Minister does not want to take an intervention, he does not need to.”
“At 2 pm today, many Members of this House will be attending the funeral of our dear friend Phil Woolas, the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth from 1997 to 2010, who passed away from a glioblastoma brain tumour on 14 March. I am sure that everybody would wish to send their condolences to his widow Tracey, sons Josh and Jed, and his mother and brother, but does the Secretary of State agree with me that condolences are no longer enough, given that there has been no improvement in treatment for the condition in 40 years?”
“I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called in the debate. I also ask you to be mindful about issues of sub judice; we have been given some flexibility by the Speaker, but I urge you to err on the side of caution when referring to ongoing cases.”
“Silently and in semi-secrecy, London and the south-east of England are experiencing the largest mass eviction by a private landlord in decades. Criterion Capital has issued at least 130 no-fault eviction notices across its portfolio, including in Britannia Point in Collier’s Wood in my constituency. Those affected have done nothing wrong. They have paid their rent, looked after their homes and worked hard, and they are simply the victims of a voracious landlord that always wants more. Will the Prime Minister ensure that in the final weeks before the abolition of no-fault evictions his Government do all they can to hold Criterion Capital to account?”
“For many people with rare cancers, and particularly those with glioblastoma, the problem is not finding the right route into a trial; it is that there are so few trials to enter. An app cannot direct patients to options that do not exist. Until we address the shortage of clinical trials, improvements in navigation risk becoming improvements in presentation, not in reality. Much of the focus remains on the development of entirely new drugs. Of course, new science matters. In the hierarchy of research, the prestige rests with foundational research; it does not rest with repurposing drugs that already exist. Countless existing drugs that are already licensed, and which are already curing or controlling other cancers, could be tested for rare cancers, including brain tumours.”
“If we are serious about improving outcomes for rare cancers, the standard is clear: we should be able to say how many clinical trials we expect to see, how many patients will be recruited and who is responsible for delivering. Such targets create urgency. Without them, rare cancers will continue to be left behind, and without clear, measurable standards for both the number of trials and the number of brain tumour patients entering them, we have no way of knowing whether access is actually improving. I note the Government’s recent announcement on greater access to breakthrough trials for rare cancers patients, including improved routes into trials through the NHS app. Any step that genuinely expands opportunity for patients is welcome, but access only matters if there is something to access.”
“Even with all that in place, barriers were still put in our way, so we must ask ourselves an uncomfortable question: if it takes that level of access, funding and political intervention simply to begin a single trial, who else can realistically hope to do the same, and what does that say about a system that talks about innovation but is not structured to support it? The experience raises a simple question: what does the system count as progress? If something truly matters, we measure it, yet when it comes to rare cancers, there are no clear targets for clinical trials, no meaningful benchmarks for progress and no real accountability when nothing happens. The absence of targets tells us something important about priorities.”
“But the road to starting this trial is an indictment of how the system treats rare cancers. The trial did not happen because the system was built to support rare cancer trials; it happened because an extraordinary number of obstacles were overcome by a small number of people, who were driven by grief and a refusal to take no for an answer. It required the backing of an exceptional clinician, who is based in a major London teaching hospital and supported by a leading university. It required a group of friends to campaign relentlessly and to raise more than £1 million in two years by selling teas, running marathons and organising fundraisers. And it required the direct engagement of the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, who was willing to listen and to help us get the trial over the line.”
“I know that many Members on both sides of the House who have fought for change in our medical system will recognise this: the system feels like a club, and if you are not already part of that club, you are positively excluded. Too often, the largest and most established institutions set the pace, define the terms, and face no real consequences when progress is slow. New ideas, new approaches and new entrants face procedural barriers at every stage. Innovation is talked about constantly, but is structurally discouraged. That brings me to my own experience. Many Members of this House will know that, against the odds, a glioblastoma drug trial is now under way, in memory of my sister. Patients have been recruited, and although it remains at an early stage, we are encouraged by what we are seeing.”
“In an organisation of such scale and influence, it is held up as the clearest example of what the system can offer patients. It is mentioned on page 77 of the national cancer plan. So far, however, only 13 patients have been recruited to that trial since 2024. This is an organisation that spent £715 million in 2023-24, and committed £419 million to cancer research. That is not a criticism of the trial, or of the clinicians delivering it—I sincerely hope that it delivers real benefit for those enrolled—but it is a criticism of how little the system has to offer people facing a diagnosis that amounts to a death sentence. To patients, this does not feel like progress; it feels like a system that has little to offer when it matters most. There is something else that we need to be honest about.”
“I have met some of the most brilliant, dedicated and innovative medical professionals through this journey, one of whom I call my closest friend. It is the result of something far more dangerous: a system that is content with the status quo and able to deliver the illusion of progress, and organisations that are not held to account. When strategies are published, when funds are ringfenced and institutions endure, there is a real risk that activity is mistaken for progress. We cannot afford to confuse motion with change. Let me give one concrete example of what I mean. Cancer Research UK recently highlighted what it describes as a flagship clinical trial for glioblastoma, a major national effort intended to bring new treatments to patients.”
“The same institutions, structures and priorities have been in place for years, and we need to be honest about where responsibility sits. Is the current leadership of the National Institute for Health and Care Research going to make a difference for rare cancers, for brain tumours, if it has not done so already? Is the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency going to? Is Cancer Research UK? These bodies have been in place for years, and yet, for glioblastoma, nothing meaningful has changed. The five-year survival rate has barely shifted. There are no routine, nationally available drug trials for patients at diagnosis. For most people, the pathway remains exactly as it is presented at diagnosis: surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, then reoccurrence. This is not due to a lack of talented clinicians.”
“When someone is diagnosed with a glioblastoma in the UK, they are told to expect the “gold standard” of treatment, but in reality, that “gold standard” has barely changed for decades. It means surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. It offers management for a short time, but no cure, and when it runs its course, patients are expected to accept the inevitable—to go home, and prepare to die. The reality is reflected in the outcomes. The UK now ranks 22nd out of 29 comparable countries for survival from brain cancer. That did not happen by accident. Outcomes like this are produced by systems—by priorities, structures and choices made over many years. The question before us is not whether we care. We all care. The question is whether the system as it is currently designed is capable of delivering something different.”
“It is about Sophie Kinsella, author of the best-selling “Shopaholic” series of novels, whose funeral I attended over at St Margaret’s a few weeks ago, and all those who saw her wonderful husband Henry and their five children follow her coffin. It is about Terry Long, who I met at his family’s fundraiser. He set up Liberty Flowers in Romford, raising thousands for glioblastoma research; he died just before Christmas. I would also like to dedicate this debate to Christine, who died of a glioblastoma on 20 January. She was the mother of a civil servant who is watching this debate, and who thanks all of us for discussing this matter tonight in the House in the belief that some progress may be made. My speech is also about the thousands of people diagnosed each year for whom time is brutally short and options are limited.”
“It is about Phil Woolas, the Member of Parliament for Oldham East and Saddleworth between 1997 and 2010 and a friend of many in the House today, who is currently in a hospice and could count his life in days and weeks, having been diagnosed with a glioblastoma. It is about the father-in-law of my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur), who inspired him to do the amazing work that he has been doing on the Rare Cancers Bill, which I understand will go to the other place for its Committee stage on Wednesday. It is about the Minister’s auntie, who I understand brought him up, and who also died of a glioblastoma.”
“I thank the Backbench Business Committee for the allocation of this time, and I am grateful to have secured the debate, alongside the hon. Member for Witney (Charlie Maynard), following the publication of the national cancer plan. Now is the time for honesty about where the system is failing. For me, this is a deeply personal debate. My remarkable, brave sister Margaret died from a glioblastoma. I cared for her for 19 months, taking her to Germany for many months because there was no treatment in the UK to offer her. I learned far more about brain tumours, the clinical trials system and the barriers to access to trials for patients than I would ever have wished to know. It is from a place of experience that I make this speech, but it is about more people than just my sister.”
“I beg to move, That this House notes that survival rates for brain tumours have seen little improvement in decades and that brain tumours remain the biggest cancer killer of children and adults under 40; expresses concern at the limited availability of clinical trials for brain tumour patients; calls on the Government to set out a clear plan to increase survival rates, including accelerating access to clinical trials and innovative therapies; further calls on the Government to support the expansion of tissue freezing and storage to enable research and the development of new treatments; and also calls on the Government to ensure the timely deployment of the research funding committed in 2018 through the National Institute for Health and Care Research for brain tumour research.”
“If we want commercial trials for rare cancers, we must be honest about the tools available to us. Either we require pharmaceutical companies to test major cancer drugs on rare cancers, or we incentivise them to do so. There is no third way—and that is painful for a Blairite like me to say. I hope that the national cancer plan will signal real change. Without our Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, and without the cancer Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton), there would be no rare cancer chapter in the national plan. However, if the current system carries on, we will be having this debate forever, without progress, and our loved ones will continue to die in shocking circumstances. That is why this debate matters, and why a shake-up is not radical, but long overdue.”
“Together with a number of Members here, I met representatives of Servier, and people are now in receipt of vorasidenib. I would be happy to talk to the hon. Lady about how we went about that. On its own, foundational research is not enough for the people who will be diagnosed with glioblastoma this year, next year or in the next decade. There are existing drugs that we can use, but the system provides little incentive to repurpose them for small patient populations, and there is little prestige in doing so. This is, at heart, a market failure. There are only two routes to more trials. One is the public and charitable route, which requires a real change in priorities and funding, and a pivot towards trying repurposed drugs. The other is the private sector, which will not deliver for rare cancers without intervention.”
“I have met Moderna, a leading company in developing cancer vaccines. I asked if it would give University College London a cancer vaccine for free for a trial on glioblastoma brain tumours, but it refused. Its excuse was that it could not make enough of the drug for 16 people. This is the rub: commercial companies do not get involved because there simply is not enough money in it, unless the Government intervene.”
“We all know that, while money is important, if the institutions that are given money do not spend it, we are all left frustrated and wondering what will happen. I have met cancer Ministers in both the last Conservative Government and this Government, all of whom have been well-intentioned and meaning to bring progress, but it requires intervention with those organisations to ensure that the money that is made available is spent.”
“The chapter on rare cancers says that a named individual at NIHR will be responsible for progress in rare cancers. If there is no progress, will they get the sack?”
“Resolved , That this House notes that survival rates for brain tumours have seen little improvement in decades and that brain tumours remain the biggest cancer killer of children and adults under 40; expresses concern at the limited availability of clinical trials for brain tumour patients; calls on the Government to set out a clear plan to increase survival rates, including accelerating access to clinical trials and innovative therapies; further calls on the Government to support the expansion of tissue freezing and storage to enable research and the development of new treatments; and also calls on the Government to ensure the timely deployment of the research funding committed in 2018 through the National Institute for Health and Care Research for brain tumour research.”
“Madam Deputy Speaker, I think I have wound up enough people this evening, but I thank all Members, from all parties, who have spoken in tonight’s debate. It is my view that the contributions of Members of this House have brought about a real and material change in what is going on at the NIHR, Cancer Research UK and other organisations, because we are watching and speaking out. We need to do that, because if we do not, they will simply continue along the same path, and we cannot allow that to happen. Question put and agreed to.”
“It is impossible to justify that, since 2018, the National Institute for Health and Care Research has invested just £13.7 million towards brain tumour research and none of the funding to date has supported using repurposed drugs—that is, using some of the immunotherapy drugs that are changing the face of the larger cancers and their outcomes.”
“Anything that increases survival of this devastating disease is worth supporting, but in my own experience, working closely with clinicians and supporting my late sister through her glioblastoma treatment, the most effective way to improve outcomes for patients with brain tumours is by accessing clinical drug trials. Without trials there is no route to better treatment or lifelines, and for too many patients, no pathway at all. I think we can all agree that the number of clinical trials under way for brain tumours is entirely inadequate.”
“Debates on brain tumours are a bit like buses—there are none for ages, then they all come one after the other. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Chris Evans) for organising this debate—the second of two debates on this topic on consecutive days. I send my condolences to Ellie and her entire family on the death of Owain. I think, like a number of people in this room, I understand some of what she has experienced. I have to inform you, Mr Western, that a former Labour MP is close to dying of a glioblastoma—another politician after Tessa Jowell and my sister Margaret. I want to ask: when do we intervene to do something about this, rather than talk about it? I am supportive of any measure that genuinely improves patient outcomes for glioblastoma patients.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Will the Minister consider how clearer, more navigable routes to accessing funding can be set out, and provide clearer direction, so that the money committed by the Government can reach the trials that patients so urgently need?”
“As a result of that debate, I went back to read the letter. It does not take us any further; the funding routes are still impossible to navigate in any effective way. I therefore thank the Minister for her commitment to provide further guidance. I do not want that just for me, for the work that I do, or for the work that Dr Mulholland does at UCLH; I want to encourage all the flowers to bloom, because somebody may actually hit on the progress we need. Even for an experienced clinical team with an established research base, the funding process is complex, fragmented and difficult to navigate. If it is challenging for clinical teams in major London teaching hospitals, I worry deeply about how many other clinical teams, without the same visibility or support, will simply fall away before a trial even has the chance to begin.”
“Our hope is to do 10 trials with repurposed drugs, and we want to clarify how we can bid for the money from the NIHR. We are not the only people doing this—we are not exceptional. Patients and families who see the lack of alternatives are getting involved and raising money, as the hon. Member just said, but anything we can raise is insignificant in comparison with what the Government or big pharma can raise. How is it that, upon Tessa Jowell’s death, the previous Government can have given the NIHR £40 million for research, in good faith, and none of it has been spent on testing out repurposed drugs? I am grateful that in yesterday’s debate the Minister highlighted the letter that I received from the head of the NIHR, Lucy Chappell, setting out the routes for funding and how they can be accessed.”
“I thank the hon. Member for all the work she does; it is thrilling to hear that her brother-in-law has made such progress with the Oncotherm machine. The machine is in the UK because my sister raised the funds to bring it over, but it cannot go into an NHS hospital because it cannot get approval from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, so it is for people who can raise the money to access it, as she rightly says. Forty thousand pounds is a lot of money, but in this world it is only a fraction of what other possible treatments may cost; people sell their homes, spend their pensions and leave themselves completely bankrupt on the death of a loved one. It is the wild west out there, as she knows. We have established a trial at UCLH, and we have encouraging early indicators, but we need to do so much more.”