Parliamentary Brain Tumour Lobby 2012

Brain tumour patients, carers, supporters and staff from The Brain Tumour Charity joined more than 100 other patients, carers, charities and healthcare professionals on the mass lobby of Parliament in June to ask local MPs to help raise awareness about brain and to use their position in Parliament to get the Government to do more in the fight against brain tumours.

Our policy work is vital as advances in these areas – earlier diagnosis, more funds for research and implementation of the NICE guidance on best practice – will lead to improvements in outcomes for people with brain tumours.

MPs were encouraged to improve awareness about brain tumours by pledging to sign an Early Day Motion, signing an e-petition, and to do more to promote awareness of brain tumours in their constituencies and to participate in meetings of the All Party Brain Tumour Group. We have been very encouraged by the response:

18 MPs, including The Brain Tumour Charity’s local MP James Arbuthnot, signed the pledge to ensure that brain tumour care is given a higher priority.

Three parliamentary questions have been tabled by Andrew Stephenson based on the three asks from the lobby which will be answered next week

7 MPs have backed an Early Day Motion http://www.parliament.uk/edm/2012-13/186

In addition to this we were able to get HeadSmart symptoms cards into the hands of several MPs.

Less than 1% of cancer research funding goes to brain tumours. As the UK’s largest brain tumour charity and the leading funder of brain tumour research, this year will invest £1million in world class, accredited AMRC-accredited research, the only brain tumour charity able to do this and we hope our policy work will influence others to invest more in research.

You could ask your MP to help raise awareness of brain tumours by:

Signing the Early Day Motion tabled by James Arbuthnot via the link above

Encouraging constituents to sign the e-petition on the Number 10 website: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/17419