Baroness Swinburne (Con)

My Lords, I too recognise that this plan is a really good step forward in terms of the long-term plan for cancer sufferers. Many of our families have been touched by this awful disease, which is many and varied. However, I would like to focus on the innovation and research side of this, our speed of uptake within the NHS across the United Kingdom and how quickly, relative to other places in the world, we get some of the testing that is available out to our UK nationals. A test called an Oncotype DX test, which is used to determine whether or not it is suitable for breast cancer sufferers to have chemotherapy, has recently been brought to my attention. In many cases, people can avoid chemotherapy if the test is actually telling the clinician that it is not necessary. In fact, the majority of patients with a particular type of breast cancer will not need chemotherapy, and that test will tell them and identify them. The reality is that that test was available in the US from 2004. It was adopted by NICE in its guidelines in the UK in 2015. It is only now being widely adopted in the NHS across the whole country, rather than just in specialist teaching hospitals. That speed of adoption means that many people are actually having unfortunate treatment that they may not have required. Therefore, I urge the Minister to look at how quickly we adopt these new genomic tests and how quickly we can actually improve that patient path for each and every patient. This was personalised medicine that was designed 20 years ago and we are only just starting to see it roll out nationally.