Jim Shannon

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I thank the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Paul Davies) for opening the debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee. I speak on behalf of my constituents and the people of Northern Ireland, who are facing a quiet but devastating crisis. By the year 2035, the number of brain tumour cases in Northern Ireland is projected to skyrocket by some 36%. Those are our mothers, our fathers, our siblings and our children—yet today, despite the standard pipelines of surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, the average survival time for an aggressive glioblastoma remains a heartbreaking 15 months. Queen’s University Belfast’s Johnston cancer research centre is making massive, globally recognised strides. Our local clinical teams are exploring rapid nanopore sequencing to drop diagnosis times from weeks to mere hours. I put on record my thanks to Brainwaves NI, which is fundraising all the time in Northern Ireland. I have three asks of the Minister. The first is UK-wide collaboration, working directly with the Northern Ireland Department of Health to ensure that our local institutions are fully integrated into all national brain cancer clinical trial networks, which they are not at present. The second is to support the pooling of resources, so that promising lab discoveries at Queen’s University can break through the bureaucratic barriers and reach patients at the bedside even faster. The third is to address the practical hurdles for families, ensuring that if a cutting-edge trial is available only across the water, financial support for travel is readily accessible to my constituents in Strangford and across Northern Ireland. Our scientists have the will and our patients have the courage. I gently say that this Government—my Government, my Minister—must do more to provide the backing.