Siobhain McDonagh MP: speeches

Speeches

• 12 Feb 2025 · Support for the Scotch Whisky Industry · Hansard source

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  I will call Graham Leadbitter to move the motion. Unusually, two further Members will make a contribution in this half-hour debate. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to sum up at the end.

• 12 Feb 2025 · Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories · Hansard source

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  Order. I do not have the power to tell you to stop, but if you would not mind coming to an end, that would be good.

• 12 Feb 2025 · Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories · Hansard source

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  Order. I ask the hon. Member to sit down. I apologise—I know that he waited a long time to make his contribution. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, who has five minutes.

• 12 Feb 2025 · Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories · Hansard source

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  Order. I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called in the debate. Please do not take that to be a promise. As everybody can see, a lot of people want to speak. We will endeavour to get through everybody, as is our hope. At the moment, we think the limit is around two minutes, but should it prove necessary to change that, I will let people know.

• 12 Feb 2025 · Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories · Hansard source

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  Order. I apologise for this, but a desire to get everybody in means that I am now reducing the time limit to one minute.

• 12 Feb 2025 · Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories · Hansard source

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  Order. Again, I do not have the power to ask you to sit down, but I would be very grateful if you did.

• 12 Feb 2025 · Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories · Hansard source

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  I clarify that I am imposing a hard two-minute limit, so I will ask hon. Members to sit down if they go over it.

• 12 Feb 2025 · Support for Pensioners · Hansard source

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  Order. I do apologise to the hon. Member, but that is not a point of order, and she knows it. I call the Minister.

• 12 Feb 2025 · Support for Pensioners · Hansard source

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  Order. The right hon. Member is a man of great of experience and he knows that this is an intervention, rather than a speech.

• 12 Feb 2025 · Support for Pensioners · Hansard source

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  I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called to speak in the debate.

• 12 Feb 2025 · Support for Pensioners · Hansard source

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  Order. We are out of time, but I want to make a public apology to the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire). I should have allowed her to intervene, and I certainly meant no discourtesy to her. Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

• 12 Feb 2025 · Support for Pensioners · Hansard source

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  Order. I remind the Member that she came into the debate very late. I do not wish to embarrass her in any way, but if she wants to intervene, she needs to be here at the start of the debate.

• 4 Feb 2025 · National Cancer Plan · Hansard source

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  I am delighted to announce to the House that we will be opening a drug trial for glioblastoma brain tumours in May, in memory of my late sister, Margaret. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] But for how long will progress on this depend on people baking cakes, running marathons and organising dinners? When will the NHS and the National Institute for Health and Care Research get their act together and do something for the 3,200 people who will be diagnosed with this dreadful illness this year?

• 23 Jan 2025 · Rare Retinal Disease · Hansard source

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  Oh, I am sorry; I nearly denied the hon. Member for Strangford his right to sum up. I apologise. I would never wish to silence him.

• 23 Jan 2025 · Rare Retinal Disease · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman can go on for as long as he likes.

• 23 Jan 2025 · Rare Retinal Disease · Hansard source

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  Order. I will now put— [ Interruption . ]

• 23 Jan 2025 · Rare Retinal Disease · Hansard source

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  I apologise again to the hon. Member for Strangford. Question put and agreed to. Resolved , That this House has considered innovation in the field of rare retinal disease.

• 20 Jan 2025 · New Hospital Programme Review · Hansard source

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  I think my point will be unlike that of any other Member in the House. The specialist emergency care hospital in Sutton is in tier 2 of these schemes. Can I say to the Secretary of State, as I have said to every Health Secretary over the past 25 years, that no one wants this? We want the services at St Helier hospital to remain at St Helier, where the people who are poorest and most ill need them. Will he look at this £500 million-pound scheme to see if it is really necessary?

• 9 Jan 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  This week, we have spent a lot of time talking about Elon Musk and his concern about violence against, and the sexual abuse of, women. I am aware of an ongoing case in which a woman continues to be stalked by a man who has already been convicted of stalking her, and who has set up an X account in her name and is posting pornography. However, Elon Musk’s company refuses to provide the IP account address needed to increase the level of sanction against the man. Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate to discuss what Mr Musk and his company can do to ensure that those guilty of harming women are properly prosecuted?

• 8 Jan 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  It saddens me to make this contribution. Three main aspects of the Bill are of particular concern to me: the proposal to make it compulsory for academies to teach the national curriculum; the harmonisation of teachers’ pay across academies and maintained schools; and the pathway for future failing schools. When I was elected in 1997, two of our four secondary schools were in the bottom performing 5% of schools in London, and London was the worst region in the country. Today we have three academies—Harris Academy Merton, Harris Academy Morden, and St Mark’s Academy—and I am delighted to tell the House that they are all Ofsted-rated “outstanding”. I wish to thank the principals, Julian Sparks, Aisha Samad, Hannah Fahey and their teams for all their efforts. According to Ofsted’s latest inspection report, one of the keys to the success of Harris Academy Merton is its “aspirational curriculum”—its version of our national curriculum that is flexible and tailored to pupils’ individual needs. Ofsted stated that teachers at the academy were able to carefully consider what pupils needed to learn, and the right time for pupils to revisit that knowledge. That is a proven recipe for success, not just at Harris Academy Merton but in academies across England. I struggle to see how removing the right to a carefully tailored education will benefit students who need the additional support that such an education provides. Forcing schools such as Harris academy to teach the national curriculum risks undermining one of the keys to their success. I have serious concerns about the proposal to change the pathway for turning around failing schools. I know from bitter personal experience that any change to the status of a school can become highly political. The current system, in which failing schools automatically become academies, provides clarity and de-politicisation, and ensures a rapid transition. I fear that making that process discretionary would result in a large increase in judicial reviews, pressure on councils and prolonged uncertainty, which is in nobody’s interests. I understand that a change might be needed to ensure that failing schools are taken over by the right academy for their needs, and not by a weak academy, and there should be a list of those academies that are not up to it, but we should not put the process at risk. My contribution is born of 27 years’ experience. I have fought teaching unions and anti-academy groups, because the most important thing is the ability of children to achieve—not our aspiring to that, and saying, “That’s what we want,” but putting the structures in place that actually bring that about. Do not put that at risk.

• 6 Jan 2025 · Health and Adult Social Care Reform · Hansard source

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  Last summer we celebrated the 25th anniversary of the elective orthopaedic centre in south-west London. The driving force behind that was Professor Richard Field, who came to my surgery every week after the 1997 election. With the help of the Prime Minister Tony Blair and the late Health Secretary Frank Dobson, he made it real. It has the lowest blood use rate for hip and knee replacements, the shortest stays and lowest levels of infection. Will my right hon. Friend congratulate Professor Richard Field and agree that his elective hubs are the way to cut waiting lists?

• 4 Dec 2024 · Biosecurity · Hansard source

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  I remind Members that should they wish to contribute to the debate they should bob.

• 4 Dec 2024 · Hospitality Sector: Eastleigh · Hansard source

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  I thank the Member for his intervention and I am sure that the Minister will take it up in his contribution. However, at the moment the Member in charge has the floor.

• 4 Dec 2024 · Hospitality Sector: Eastleigh · Hansard source

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  I will call Liz Jarvis to move the motion and then call the Minister to respond. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up. I call Liz Jarvis to move the motion.

• 26 Nov 2024 · Treatment of Terminal Illness · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision about the liability of practitioners, and of the organisation which employs the practitioner, where a practitioner prescribes an unlicensed medicine to or carries out a non-standard treatment on a person who is terminally ill; to make provision about the import, storage and use of equipment and unlicensed medicines for the purpose of such prescriptions or such treatment; and for connected purposes. Advances in medical science wait for no man or woman—unless, of course, they are one of the thousands of people in the UK each year diagnosed with a rare cancer. In that case, they are likely to receive NHS treatment that has remained unchanged for more than 30 years, with no improvement in outcomes, no access to drug trials and no access to the huge progress that has been made in individualised cancer vaccines or immunotherapy. It does not have to be that way. In Germany, medical practitioners can offer experimental treatments to patients with a terminal diagnosis without fear that they, or the organisations that employ them, will be held liable or penalised. They can offer patients a lifeline that doctors in the UK are not allowed to offer. I am introducing this Bill to protect clinicians in the same way and to allow patients access to the latest medical treatments. In truth, we know this ten-minute rule Bill has no prospect of becoming law. However, it serves another purpose: to give a voice to the thousands of terminally ill patients and the ordeal they are forced to endure in search of a lifeline; to expose the culture of fear among medical professionals in the NHS surrounding individualised treatment; and to suggest a better way forward. Excuse my German pronunciation, but Individuelle Heilversuche is the German law that allows doctors to provide personalised, individual treatment plans. When a terminally ill patient has run out of traditional treatment options, medical practitioners can use treatments that have not been fully approved, or that have been approved for other purposes, as part of individual treatment programmes. They are able to prescribe drugs for off-label use—drugs that are known to save lives but are not yet available to patients with a specific condition. How can it be right not to offer the same rights to patients in the UK? Instead, the NHS—and healthcare in general—abandons them to die when the outdated and inadequate standard care fails. Understandably, many fight and take the hard choice to travel internationally—in this case, to Germany—to find the treatments denied to them in their own country. I know this path, as I walked it with my sister. I held her head as she was sick into a bin on the concourse at Heathrow airport’s terminal 5. I obscured her from flight attendants in fear that they would take her off the plane, and that we would not get to Düsseldorf. One night, I wondered how I would explain her death in a foreign city, in a country where I did not speak the language or understand the emergency care. But I would do it all again, because I wanted to extend her life and there was nothing for her here in the UK. We were lucky that we could pay for it. Thousands of people are currently following the same difficult path. For some, it is harder because they do not have the money. At a time of great distress, they are forced to sell their homes, run marathons or bake cakes to fund the treatment their loved one needs. Many are forced to travel alone because their partner cannot afford to go with them or cannot afford to take their children. Laura was diagnosed with a glioblastoma when she was just 18. A first-year student at King’s College London, she was told that she had just 12 months to live under the standard care available through the NHS. For Laura’s family, this was just not good enough. In Germany, they found an individualised treatment plan that helped Laura to live four and a half years past her diagnosis, defying the mere 12 months that oncologists in the UK had given her. Before she lost her battle with cancer, Laura completed her degree and a wonderful bucket list, including crossing the equator, presenting the weather and meeting Michelle Obama. This decision to travel overseas for highly expensive treatment is not to be taken lightly, but I ask the House the same question that Laura’s indomitable mum, Nicola, asked her oncologist, “What would you do if this was your child?” When Zoe, a 35-year-old secondary school teacher with two young sons, was diagnosed with a grade 4 cancer, she found the NHS treatment available seemed old-fashioned and out of date. Her oncologist was against trying anything different, despite telling her she had just 15 months to live. Zoe was able to access experimental treatment in Germany—treatment that research has since highlighted results in an increase in survival time. She passed away two years after her diagnosis, but critically was able to access treatment that did not affect her quality of life, something that cannot be said for the treatment that would have been available in the UK. Zoe’s husband told me: “When you are handed a death sentence, your risk appetite changes.” Zoe, along with the countless other patients who have reached out to me with a range of cancers and terminal illnesses, whose stories I wish I could share with the House, should never have had to travel for her treatment. Margaret should never have had to travel. We know that in many cases individual treatment has been proven to lead to people surviving for far longer than their original prognosis. I can say with confidence that it did so for Margaret. It provides hope that we simply do not get from our current health system. That is why I propose we extend the opportunity of individual treatment programmes to the thousands of people with a terminal diagnosis in the UK. We must end the cruel practice of forcing our most vulnerable to travel overseas to access better care, at huge expense. It is clear that legislation is needed to protect our doctors and to allow them to progress with the best standard of care. At the very least, we need to end the culture of fear among medical professionals in this country with regard to experimental and individual treatments, so that they can inform their patients of options that could lengthen their life expectancy. As Zoe’s husband said to me: “Patients do not want the fatalism that many in this field have. Realism is fine, but no-one has the right to remove hope from a patient.” This Bill would bring that hope back to thousands of people. Question put and agreed to. Ordered, That Dame Siobhain McDonagh, Jim Shannon, Uma Kumaran, Peter Lamb, Luke Murphy, Rachael Maskell, Tonia Antoniazzi, Valerie Vaz, Mary Glindon, Sorcha Eastwood, Helena Dollimore and Natasha Irons present the Bill. Dame Siobhain McDonagh accordingly presented the Bill. Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 17 January, and to be printed (Bill 139).