Chris Kane

I want to talk about what happens after a diagnosis. A relative of mine was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and he was offered treatment through NHS Scotland. However, there was another option, focal therapy, which was not mentioned to him. He subsequently discovered that he was eligible for that treatment, but it was not available through his local health board; it was only available to him privately. The way in which he discovered the therapy was rather unusual: he was watching “Clarkson’s Farm”. He was struck by how quickly Jeremy Clarkson appeared to have received treatment after sharing his cancer diagnosis on the programme and, given what my relative knew about both treatment and tractor suspension, how quickly he was back driving in his fields. My relative had expected that treatment would mean weeks or months of recovery, but what he saw on television prompted him to investigate, and that is how he discovered focal therapy. He eventually had the procedure and is now cancer-free, but it raises some difficult questions. First, why was he not told about the option in the first place? As a Scottish MP, I recognise that health is devolved, but we are still part of one United Kingdom. If one part of a country is at the vanguard of new medical technology, surely we have an obligation to learn from it and share that knowledge. Whatever political or administrative boundaries we operate within, patients deserve access to information about all clinically appropriate treatment options. I am not arguing that focal therapy is suitable for every man with prostate cancer—of course, it is not. However, the availability of treatment in one part of the country should not determine whether a patient in another part even knows whether it exists, let alone whether they can access it. Surely we cannot be relying on someone watching “Clarkson’s Farm” to push for information on what their treatment options might be. I ask the Minister: what more can be done to ensure that patients across all four nations of the United Kingdom are informed about clinically appropriate treatments, including those available beyond their own health board and national NHS system? Screening would give more men information quicker to start to make informed decisions with their doctors. However they find their way to the doctor to take a PSA test, if they are fortunate enough to find out early that they have cancer, we owe them all the information they need to make informed choices about what happens next.