New Alliance MP speaks about husband’s rare blood cancer diagnosis

Sorcha Eastwood, first female MP to represent Lagan Valley, called for cancer diagnoses to be put back on the political agenda.

Alliance MP Sorcha Eastwood (Oliver McVeigh/PA) (PA Wire)

A newly elected MP has called for cancer diagnoses to be put back on the political agenda after speaking about her husband’s battle with a rare form of blood cancer.

Sorcha Eastwood, the first female MP to represent Lagan Valley in Northern Ireland, said she would be “fighting tooth and nail” to make sure the NHS is funded adequately so that it “remains the way it was meant to be”.

In her maiden speech on Tuesday, the Alliance MP told the Commons: “One in two of us will get cancer in our lifetime. Last year I know personally five of my constituents that were diagnosed in an accident and emergency department.

I'm not sure how this slid down the public agenda, but cancer survival rates in the UK are as much as 25 years behind other European countries. And while health may be devolved, the concept of the NHS definitely isn't

Sorcha Eastwood

“Just two of those people are alive today, and that’s in a year. And one of these people that was diagnosed in the (department) was my husband, who was diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer.

“Through that time, coping with that diagnosis, we have met hundreds of families right across the UK and Ireland that have been impacted by this … every second in this place, in this country, somebody will get a diagnosis of cancer.

“I’m not sure how this slid down the public agenda, but cancer survival rates in the UK are as much as 25 years behind other European countries. And while health may be devolved, the concept of the NHS definitely isn’t.

“I certainly will be fighting tooth and nail to make sure that it remains the way it was meant to be, so that we don’t underfund it and gaslight the patients who need it and staff who are working in it.”

Ms Eastwood said her drive to go into politics came from her mother who, she said, “worked damn hard as a domiciliary care worker and she wanted her daughter to have a better life”.

She continued: “Just today when I was sitting on these benches, somebody sent me a wee private message and they said, ‘Could you help me with this? And here, by the way, it’s good to see one of us got in there’.

“And they didn’t mean ‘one of us’ in the Northern Irish sense of the past, they meant somebody who grew up in the same street as me, somebody who had the same social problems, somebody who knew what it was like to work a minimum wage job – strong, dignified people.

“It should be clear as day that people do not want more of the same, they don’t need to be told that it’s going to be painful, because they have been in pain for a long, long time. The message needs to be one of hope, ambition, vision, inspiration.”

Labour’s Julia Buckley used her maiden speech to pay tribute to her friend Jo Cox, the late MP who was murdered by a far-right terrorist in 2016.

Ms Buckley, who represents Shrewsbury, said Ms Cox inspired her to return to politics, adding that “life is too short and precious to wait for other people to solve problems”.

She told the MPs: “I worked in the European Parliament for five years in Brussels, specialising in regional investment funding to tackle inequality.

“Whilst I was there I made friends with the chirpy young woman in the next door office, another northern lass passionate about politics: Jo Leadbeater, who later became Jo Cox – we ran the New York Marathon together in 2001 with Suzy Sumner, as the northern lasses.

After realising that life is too short and precious to wait for other people to solve problems, I decided to be more like Jo, and that week I rejoined my local Labour Party

Julia Buckley

“We were so proud of Jo when she became an MP, and how with her usual style of tigerish enthusiasm and charm, she would persuade everyone towards her policy aims.

“All the more reason why her death was so difficult to comprehend, a senseless loss of someone so sincere and positive, Jo never shied away from standing up for what she believed in, what really mattered, however important or difficult or unpopular.

“She never said she was too tired or too busy, she just got on and fought for what was important, and always with a winning smile.

“Jo inspired me back into politics. After realising that life is too short and precious to wait for other people to solve problems, I decided to be more like Jo, and that week I rejoined my local Labour Party.

“May I take this moment to conclude by saying to Jo, and to her sister Kim, that finally the northern lasses are reunited in this place.”

Jen Craft, the new Labour MP for Thurrock, paid tribute to her family and said part of her motivation for becoming an MP was her daughter’s Down’s syndrome diagnosis.

In her maiden speech, she said: “Almost seven years ago I found out that the baby I was carrying had Down’s syndrome. A rug-pulling, life-altering moment. But I didn’t realise, but I wish I had, that it would be the making of my family and the start of a truly incredible journey.

“As the actress Sally Phillips says, the Send (special educational needs and disabilities) parent club is one no-one wants to be in, but once you’re there, you realise that all the best people are.

“However the world doesn’t work for families like mine, it doesn’t work for children like mine, it doesn’t work for people like me and my daughter. When I received her diagnosis, I made her a promise that I would do everything I could to make her life easier. Little did I realise that it would lead me here.”