Contribution
The simple answer is yes, I totally agree. The hon. Lady has summed it up perfectly.
In 2023-24, charities provided 74% of all investment, which of course left just 26% coming from Government. There is a clear link between funding and survival. Investment enables more clinical trials, better patient recruitment and improved access to innovation. I therefore call on the Government to set out how much funding will be ringfenced, and to raise their contribution to between £45 million and £50 million by 2029 in line with the recommendations from Brain Tumour Research.
At the same time, we must recognise that funding alone will not deliver the progress we urgently need. The wider research and innovation environment must be reformed so that discoveries progress more efficiently into clinical development and patient access. Discovery research is essential, yet many innovations still fail to cross the translational valley of death, where fragmented, high-risk and unsupported pathways cause breakthroughs to stall.
Stronger collaboration between institutions is needed to accelerate early-stage research, and the Government should also clarify the role of UK Research and Innovation within the national cancer plan, given its central contribution to discovery science. In addition, health technology assessment reform is required so that appraisal bodies adopt fairer and more flexible cost-effectiveness thresholds for rare and less survivable cancers, including brain tumours.
Patient awareness is essential. As Professor Kathreena Kurian highlighted, many patients are left unaware that they must give consent for their tumour tissue to be used in advanced diagnostics and research. Every eligible patient must have proactive conversations with their clinical team about research opportunities. Greater participation is essential to attract investment, and when trials are easier to set up and recruit for, commercial and academic partners are more likely to set up further studies in the UK.
Alongside that, we must address an issue repeatedly raised by patients and families: the right to pursue innovative treatment when standard options have been exhausted. Too many families find themselves travelling abroad, seeking repurposed drugs or raising money online to access treatments. No family should be forced to remortgage their home, empty savings or appeal to strangers online simply to pursue the possibility of more time. These improvements depend on one further requirement: strong national leadership. Currently, no single body within the Government, NHS England or the wider health system holds clear ownership of brain cancer outcomes. Where responsibility is spread everywhere, accountability exists nowhere. Patients deserve to know who is responsible for delivering change.
Before I close, I will return to the reason the petition exists. In October 2022, Sarah Bainbridge’s daughter Jess was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer that, until then, her family had never heard of. Jess underwent treatment, including two operations, but her family soon realised that once the standard options were exhausted, very few alternatives remained. Like many other families, they found themselves searching beyond established pathways. Jess died in November 2023. She was just 35 years old, and had three children: Alfred, who was five, and one-year-old twins Billy and Alba. In Sarah’s words:
“If I am honest, we have needed Jess every single day since she died, and we still do.”
This is not just Jess’s story; it is the story of thousands of families across the UK. Following Jess’s death, Sarah met Georgie Maynard, a young mother living with glioblastoma. Although their circumstances were different, they shared the same frustration: that patients and families were still facing many of the same barriers identified decades earlier. Together, they founded Brain Cancer Justice, not for sympathy or recognition, but to call for urgent change. It was my privilege to meet with Brain Cancer Justice in the lead-up to this debate, and I encourage Ministers to do the same.
This should not only be about recognition or reassurance but about ending broken promises, raising ambition and protecting delivery. Patients and families have waited long enough: we must turn “terminal” into “treatable”.