Moment Nick Ferrari grills health minister over Daily Express cancer campaign
The 66-year-old broadcaster posed a key question about an issue which affects the lives of millions.
LBC presenter Nick Ferrari pushed for answers this morning when he quizzed a Labour minister about the Daily Express’s campaign to improve mental health support for cancer patients. It comes after we wrote to Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Public Health Minister Ashley Dalton ahead of Labour publishing its blueprint to improve cancer care in England.
We want to see cancer hospitals recognising mental health as a core side-effect of the disease, and ensuring patients get the help they need, and have been campaigning on this issue for the past year. And we are urging both of them to meet with us before their plan is published on February 4 to discuss the changes needed to make it fit for purpose. To try and get his thoughts on the issue, Mr Ferrari broached the subject with Care Minister Stephen Kinnock.
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The 66-year-old broadcaster said: “You might be aware of a story in one of the newspapers today, the Daily Express, concerning their reporter, Robert Fisk, who sadly has incurable bowel cancer.
“He's written a sort of open letter, as it were, to two of your colleagues, Wes Streeting and Ashley Dalton, in which he talks about the provision of mental health support for those who have cancer and, indeed, the families of those who have cancer. Can I get a word from you on that, Mr Kinnock?”
The minister replied: “My heart goes out to him and I wish him all the very best in this very difficult time.
“I appreciate absolutely how difficult it is in terms of people who have this diagnosis and their mental health condition, but the Government is slowly but surely getting on top of this issue and turning it around.”
And asking him about the letter, he said: “Do you support the ideas put forward by some charities?
“They would like a meeting with you or some of your senior colleagues to talk about the mental health care aspect. Can I ask that you take that on board, Mr Kinnock?”
Mr Kinnock replied: “I'll absolutely take that on board and take that back to the department. “Absolutely.”
The minister also said that the Government is to have an additional 8,500 mental health specialists recruited by the end of this Parliament, as well as opening mental health hubs across the country, which he said were “a sort of accident and emergency approach on mental health” and increasing the amount of NHS talking therapies that people can have access to.
The Daily Express Cancer Care campaign wants the NHS and the Government to recognise that mental health support isn’t always about high-level care provided by “mental health specialists”. Instead it can just be as simple as someone being referred to a walking group to combat loneliness or given a helpline number to get advice about money worries.
