Edinburgh MP Scott Arthur deserves congratulations on Bill which aims at level playing field on cancer research
It's not every MP who finds themselves piloting legislation through the Commons within their first year in the job.
But last Friday, Edinburgh South West Labour MP Scott Arthur- who was only elected at last year’s general election - saw his Rare Cancers Bill successfully complete its passage through the Lower House before heading for the Lords. And there's a strong chance it will now become law.
As Dr Arthur points out, “rare cancers” are not really rare since together they account for 47 per cent of UK cancer diagnoses each year - that’s 180,000 people.
But because there is a relatively small market for the drugs for each type of rare cancer, there is little incentive for the pharmaceutical companies to pursue new treatments, which means that some of the treatments currently used for these cancers have not advanced for 20 years or more.
Dr Arthur’s Bill aims to boost research by removing barriers and paving the way for new ways to incentivise the drug companies. It will place a duty on the Secretary of State to promote research into rare cancers,; it will increase patient access to clinical trials by making it easier to register and by building a central database of willing patients; and it will instigate a review to explore how pharmaceutical companies could be encouraged to trial existing drugs used for other types of cancer to treat rare cancers, or when they are trialling new drugs on more common cancers to trial them on rare cancers too.
He says the Bill is about delivering justice for the thousands of people living with rare cancers, which are often among the most deadly forms of the disease, yet whose treatments are too often outdated. As medical science advances, they have been left behind.
Dr Arthur’s Bill was brought forward as a Private Member’s Bill, made possible because he won one of the top places in the regular ballot for such Bills and that guaranteed him enough parliamentary time to have a realistic chance of getting it passed. It’s the same system that allowed David Steel to reform abortion law in 1967 and has enabled the current proposal to legalise assisted dying, already passed by MPs and now awaiting approval by the Lords.
Amid all the distrust of politicians and parties, it is good there is a way in which individual MPs can institute non-partisan legislation that will make a real difference to people’s lives. And Dr Arthur deserves congratulations on getting this far and best wishes for seeing the task completed.