Helen Maguire

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. Although I welcome the Government’s final delivery plan for ME and chronic fatigue syndrome, and I recognise the contribution of the ME community in shaping it, I remain deeply concerned that the plan falls short of delivering the meaningful change that is urgently needed by people living with those conditions. I therefore reaffirm the calls rightly made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wells and Mendip Hills. In particular, the plan fails to set out dedicated funding to encourage early career researchers to specialise in ME research, or strategies to keep established researchers in the field. Those things are vital to develop new pathways that enable people to better cope with their diagnosis and, most importantly, improve their quality of life. Funding is also needed to step up education and training to improve understanding of the condition across the public sector and to pilot new approaches that strengthen the quality of care. Recent figures estimate that over 400,000 people in the UK have ME, and around 50% of the 1.9 million people in the UK with long covid are thought to have symptoms that are similar to ME. Those figures make it clear that there is a desperate need for research to develop better treatment options and training for doctors, carers and wider healthcare workers. We cannot ignore the fact that making those changes is a big task. Under the previous Conservative Government, cuts only made supporting people harder—from slashing health services to letting wait times pile up and overseeing a horrifying breakdown of community services—so it is no wonder that more people are suffering without support. That is why I urge this Government to make sure that the final delivery plan delivers real change for people living with ME and invests properly in research to change the course of diagnosis and treatment for good. For my constituent and for people living with ME across the country, we must take serious action to ensure that their experience with the healthcare system is rooted in dignity and care.