Hello, I'm Alicia McCarthy. Thanks for downloading the Yesterday in Parliament podcast. On Friday

the 14th of March, the government gave its backing to a bill to encourage investment and

research into rare cancers. It's estimated that for every 100 people diagnosed around 47 will

have some form of rare cancer. The Labour MP, Chavonne's sister, Margaret,

a former General Secretary of the Labour Party, died from glioblastoma, a type of brain cancer.

Chavonne McDonough began by addressing the Deputy Speaker. I would like to start through you to

apologise to the young black man on the tube

from the Northern Line from Collierswood this morning for having to spend his journey looking at me

sobbing my heart out. It must have been a very odd experience and I wanted to say to him,

I'm not just sad. I am angry.

Shevonne McDonough directed her fury at the NHS, the Medicines Regulator and the National Institute for Health Research.

Why she wanted to know were drugs not being repurposed for people with rare cancers.

She'd taken her sister to Germany for treatment.

You know, I've told her stories of holding my sister's head as she was sick in a bucket on Terminal 5 Heathrow Airport,

of carrying her onto a plane in an effort to hope that the air stewardess would not see how she was,

of lying next to her over the night,

hoping that she would be alive in the morning because

what was I going to do in a hotel in Germany and a country where I couldn't speak the language?

That's my experience, but I'm only one of thousands and thousands and thousands of people,

including children who do this every year, because our system will not allow the use

of novel treatments. She was speaking in a debate on a bill from another Labour MP, Dr Scott Arthur,

whose father-in-law also died from glioblastoma. He was calling on the government to increase support for research

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