Rupa Huq MP: speeches

Speeches

• 17 Jun 2025 · Prostate Cancer Treatment · Hansard source

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  I totally agree. West London needs the same as the west of Scotland, the west of Wales, and all the other bits of those other nations. Men can access abiraterone on the NHS in Scotland and Wales, but not in England, even with an identical diagnosis. It seems at best anomalous that their postcode, not their prognosis, is determining their treatment, and we all know that the NHS is meant to be free at the point of need. I would give anything to have had longer with my dad. I was reminded of him when, like the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon), I had someone come to see me: Peter Treadgold, who came to my advice surgery and pointed out that he is falling between the cracks. He had a long-standing diagnosis, with remission, and he diligently followed all the advice. He was under NHS monitoring for 20 years because he had heightened prostate-specific antigen levels, although he was never actually offered an MRI or ultrasound scan. Last year, his cancer came back, and he was told that he would need hormone and radiation therapy; abiraterone was not offered. Peter is one of the one in three people who get the devastating news that their cancer has come back, and has been denied access to a treatment that could save or extend his life. The first time I heard of abiraterone was when I met Peter, because as my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) said, in my dad’s day, it would not have been cost-efficient. However, it is now a generic drug—it has gone off patent—but it is licensed only for metastatic cases. As my hon. Friend the Minister knows well, there is a complicated, convoluted process involved in getting it approved for non-metastatic cases. There is no question about the effectiveness of abiraterone. It has had one of the biggest trials known to mankind, a genuinely world-beating trial. When NHS England’s own clinical priorities advisory group plotted the clinical benefit against the net cost, abiraterone scored highest in that tabulation. It is calculated that two years of abiraterone treatment would halve the death rate for men with locally advanced prostate cancer, but we hear about budgetary challenges. I have written to the Minister and tabled questions, and have been told that NHS England has not identified the recurrent budget to support provision of the drug. We should look long-term, at the remissions, and at the cost of chemotherapy, hospital appointments and other associated things. Those costs add up. University College London found that abiraterone would pay for itself if it were £11 a day. Do Members know what the NHS is actually paying? Does anyone want to hazard a guess? Oh, we are not doing call and response. Abiraterone costs £2.75 a day, now that it is off patent and has come down in price. That is less than three measly quid to avoid costly relapses, scans, chemo, hospital appointments and everything else—less than three little round ones to improve lives and reduce deaths. As we have heard, only people who can fork out up front for private treatment or private medical insurance currently have that option, and again, our NHS was not meant to be for private profiteering or big pharma drug pushers. People are seeing their pensions and life savings evaporate, and we are in a cost of living crisis. This drug should be universally available. It took less than one year for abiraterone to be approved for men with non-metastatic prostate cancer in Scotland and Wales. In England, it is now three years and counting, and we still have not had a concrete resolution. Right now, abiraterone is the cheapest and most cost-effective it has ever been, and as the excellent Prostate Cancer UK put it, the postcode lottery must end. Lord Darzi’s independent investigations into the NHS found that the UK had higher cancer mortality rates than other comparable countries, and sadly, progress in diagnosing cancer at stages 1 and 2 is flatlining. Just over half of prostate cancers are caught at an early stage. That falls well short of the NHS target of 75%. I appreciate that Labour has just come into power after 14 years of the Conservative party, so it will take time to fix our health system, but we need it to be more responsive—to act early and rapidly, to use all the tools it can, and to offer preventive rather than after-the-fact care in every case. Abiraterone exemplifies all those things. I welcome the Chancellor’s 3% real-terms increase in NHS spending to deliver the exciting plan to build an NHS fit for the future. With the 10-year plan coming soon and the national cancer strategy due this autumn, we have a real chance to deliver significant improvements for people living with cancer, so as is customary, I have a list of questions for the Minister. I will incorporate those of my hon. Friends—I think we are all friends here, even if we sit on opposite sides of the Chamber. First, will the Minister commit to exploring ways of ensuring that additional NHS funding is used to make abiraterone available to all men who need it in England—and in Northern Ireland, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has pointed out? Secondly, will the Minister support the introduction of a national programme of screening for prostate cancer, like those that we have for comparable cancers in the United Kingdom? Thirdly, given the complexity of NHS England’s decision-making processes in relation to the availability of abiraterone—which sound like a right old bureaucratic nightmare—as the functions of NHS England are transferred back to the Department of Health and Social Care, will the Minister take steps to ensure that all decisions about access to medicine, including abiraterone, are timely and transparent? I know that she has had a long career in the NHS, and as I have said, she is on the side of the angels. Fourthly, will the Minister commit to publishing an equality impact assessment, given the disturbingly disproportionate effect that prostate cancer is having on black men, who are more likely to develop it and to receive a late diagnosis, and less likely to receive the right treatment? I am doing this partly for Dad, who is watching from somewhere up above, but also for the black and minority ethnic men who are implicated here and now. This is the second time that you have been in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, when I have been talking about health inequalities since Friday, when we discussed assisted dying. You have chaired both debates excellently. Fifthly, in the light of the lengthy approval process, will the Minister assess the adequacy of the funding formula model—we have NICE and we have the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, and it all seems a bit knotty—and consider whether novel pharmaceutical treatments could be produced cost-effectively, especially, as my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip said, when they come off-patent. I am arguing for simplification in cases in which drugs are already prescribed for limited use and there is a credible case for expanding their application to a generic treatment. We are halfway there; we just need to go that little bit further. Prostate Cancer UK estimates that 672 men die prematurely each year because we have no access to abiraterone. Each week that this continues, 13 men in England will die from a cancer that could have been treated cheaply had they lived in Scotland or Wales. Labour is the party of the NHS, and a Labour Government introduced the UK’s first dedicated cancer strategy; so let us go for this win-win for all, end the iniquitous, unjust postcode lottery, celebrate the best of British science, and widen access to abiraterone for all those who need it, not just those who can afford it.

• 13 Jun 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  I totally agree. We know that Esther Rantzen and Jonathan Dimbleby want the Bill to be implemented, but our role is to be voices for the voiceless, so I totally agree with her. As opposed to the vague, ever-changing qualifying criteria that are held up as safeguards, at least these amendments would put ethnic minority people on the board: new clause 6 says that if they are on the ward, they should be on the board as well. The Bill seems to have neglected them altogether, so the new clause would provide real protections. We know that in a cost of living crisis, assisted dying could be quite attractive. BAME communities have lower disposable household incomes than standard households, and during a cost of living and housing crisis, it is possible to imagine relatives wanting to speed up granny or grandad’s probate—or naani maa or dadima, even—to get a foot on the ladder.

• 13 Jun 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

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  I rise to support amendments 34 to 36 and new clause 6, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall and Bloxwich (Valerie Vaz), who sadly cannot be here today. Health inequality shapes life expectancy and outcomes —covid deaths illuminated that—but it is absent from the Bill. A younger me would have been 100% behind this Bill. I am very pro body autonomy when it comes to abortion, but 10 years of being an MP has exposed me to coercion, duress, the billionaire price of London property, and elder abuse. It is no coincidence that, like me, the majority of London MPs and of black and minority ethnic MPs oppose the Bill. Let us look at amendment 34. The experience of my aged parents—now no longer with us—opened my eyes to a world of pills, incontinence pads, hoists, power of attorney, key safe boxes and carer worries. I saw how non-native English-speaking pensioners—I am not talking about Welsh speakers—have their agency denied, perhaps unconsciously, by health professionals in a stretched system. My mum’s GP had a clear contempt for her accented words. At every appointment she would say to her, “One question only”. As my mum grew frailer and began to lose the power of speech, she reverted to her mother tongue and was seen by hospital teams as an annoyance, a time waster, and bed blocker. Similarly, the disabled are often written off. People cannot see beyond the wheelchair or the non-verbal. Amendment 34 would place a duty on the chief medical officer to provide information at every step of the way

• 11 Jun 2025 · Child Poverty and No Recourse to Public Funds · Hansard source

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  Order. A number of Members are bobbing, so we will calculate how long everyone will get. To start, I call Kirsty Blackman.

• 11 Jun 2025 · Child Poverty and No Recourse to Public Funds · Hansard source

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  I call Keir Mather MP, who is making his Westminster Hall Dispatch Box debut as Minister for the day.

• 11 Jun 2025 · Child Poverty and No Recourse to Public Funds · Hansard source

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  Actual Minister!

• 12 May 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T5. My constituent Charlie Vernon was happily benefiting from the Access to Work scheme until redundancy. He found a new job and did a fresh application last autumn, but since then, well beyond the 24-week timeframe, there has been nothing. Will my right hon. Friend look into these sorts of delays and have a more joined-up system, because assessors are apparently dealing with applications from August at the moment?

• 3 Mar 2025 · Independent Schools: VAT and Business Rates Relief · Hansard source

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  I do not know how parliamentary that language is. I am not going to join in the praise of Eton, particularly because I think the hon. Lady may have been an atypical parent. I imagine that some parents there would be able to bear a 20% increase, and for a school that is clever with its accounts, these things may just be a rounding error. I am talking about smaller schools for which that does not apply. It is interesting to see the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice) here. I have a massively remain constituency, with 72% of my electorate voting remain, but, perversely for Reform, it is leaving the EU that has made this policy possible—it is a Brexit benefit. If only we had never left the EU, this would not be happening. Usually education is not a taxable luxury good, and there is a fear that if this increase happens, what could be next—nurseries or universities? I used to work in that sector. There is a slight worry that there is a loophole, because the policy contradicts the EU’s VAT directive that specifies there should be no VAT on any form of education. In Greece in 2015, the left-wing Syriza Government wanted to introduce VAT at 23%. They had to abandon that for a slew of different reasons, including because it was contrary to the EU’s VAT directive. University tuition is zero rated, and there is a worry among my friends in the sector there, who say, “You’re lucky to have got out when you did, because they’re closing so many university departments in the UK.” What could be next? I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister can assure me that nurseries and universities are off limits. We have heard all these things—that schools are going to close—and we have heard a lot of catastrophising, but it remains to be seen whether those things will come to pass. One of my schools went in 2023. My worry is that this policy will make an elitist system more elitist. The Government say in their response: “Ending tax breaks for private schools was a tough but necessary decision”, but when growth comes, is there a way of undoing it? It was a very clear policy in many manifestos, so I understand that it will not all be undone, but let us think a bit creatively.

• 15 Oct 2024 · Renewable Energy Projects: Community Benefits · Hansard source

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  Order. For the benefit of everyone in the room, we avoid the word “you” because it refers to me. I remind all hon. Members that we speak in the third person.

• 7 Oct 2024 · Benefit Sanctions · Hansard source

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  According to recent research by Gingerbread, a high percentage of sanctions have been misapplied to single parents, not because they have not met the job search requirements but because of missed meetings for reasons connected with childcare. Max, a bereaved single dad of two, had his sanction overturned, which involved a fairly challenging process. Will my hon. Friend please look into the possibility of overhauling the mess of a system that was left behind by that lot over there?

• 7 Oct 2024 · Benefit Sanctions · Hansard source

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  17. What assessment she has made of trends in the number of benefit sanctions in the last five years.