Lord Blencathra (Con)

My Lords, I spoke to this excellent little Bill at Second Reading and said that I wanted to table an amendment to put the Royal Marsden hospital front and centre in new subsection (3)(b) inserted by Clause 2(b), which states, “ensure that a person (to be known as ‘the National Specialty Lead for Rare Cancers’) is appointed with a job description that includes promoting and facilitating research into rare cancers by … providing advice in relation to the design and planning of research, and … facilitating collaboration between interested persons”. I did not table such an amendment because the Bill would not then have cleared our parliamentary timetable. However, I press the Minister on the essential need, in my opinion, to have the Royal Marsden involved in that section; either it should have the national specialty lead or the job description of that person must involve the Marsden. The Royal Marsden is the greatest rare cancer specialist hospital in Europe and in the top four in the whole world. Since Second Reading on 16 January, the Royal Marsden has announced on 10 February a new £1 billion expansion of its world-leading cancer hub, together with the Institute of Cancer Research. It will be the largest cancer treatment and research facility anywhere in the world, and it is just three miles away from this place. If we want the Bill to succeed, I ask the Minister to please put the world’s best people in charge.