Dr Scott Arthur, MP for Edinburgh South West, has said there is still “much more to be done” in Scotland, following Commonwealth swimmer Archie Goodburn’s impassioned plea to the Prime Minister on the BBC Breakfast show.
EDINBURGH MP Dr Scott Arthur has said that there is still “much more to be done” in Scotland after swimmer Archie Goodburn made an impassioned plea on BBC Breakfast to the Prime Minister.
Goodburn, who was diagnosed with inoperable brain tumours two years ago, tearfully addressed Andy Burnham directly, saying he was “on his knees begging” for the government to put more money and resources into brain cancer research.
Replying to the video on TikTok, Burnham said: “Archie, thank you for this. I know how hard it must have been.
“What you’re doing for other people while you’re going through all this yourself shows the best of us.
“I’d really like to meet you and hear from you directly and I’ve asked my team to get in touch.”
Dr Arthur, who has served as Labour MP for Edinburgh South West since 2024, has since weighed in on the discussion, as he promoted the Rare Cancers Bill at Westminster as a Private Members Bill. The legislation came into effect on 5 April this year.
Archie Goodburn. © Euan Cherry for Edinburgh University
The new law is designed to tackle disparities in cancer care and funding, with its core mandates including faster research, the improvement of clinical trials, a review of “orphan drug” regulation to ensure new treatments are evaluated and reach patients faster, and the creation of specific roles to coordinate research and treatment efforts.
However, Dr Arthur suggested the Scottish Government is lagging behind its counterpart, highlighting key areas for improvement such as Scotland’s cancer strategy and its lack of genomic testing.
Speaking on Thursday, Dr Arthur said: “It was quite difficult watching [Archie’s plea]. I’ve met him half a dozen times and he’s always respectful, clear, focused and unflappable so it was quite hard to see him so emotional.
“The kind of tumour that killed my father-in-law is the most common type, glioblastoma, and that has an average life expectancy on diagnosis of nine months, and treatments for that haven’t changed in 30 years.
“Thirty years ago or more, conditions like leukaemia were seen as being a death sentence but now, because of treatments, these conditions can be survivable.
Dr Scott Arthur, MP. © 2025 Martin McAdam
“And so, Archie looks at the progress made in leukaemia, breast cancer, lung cancer, all these other cancer types and we’ve just not seen anything like the same progress in brain tumours and that rightly really frustrates him, and that’s why he wants to see progress.”
Goodburn had said in the same speech that he was “extremely grateful” to Dr Arthur and the work he had done, saying that the Bill was a “step in the right direction” but claimed that the Act was not going to make the changes needed.
On this, Dr Arthur said: “I do hope that ultimately it will drive the change that we need. Obviously it was a private members’ bill so I had to negotiate with the government and try to build a cross-party consensus.
“The Act I pushed through had the backing of about 40 cancer charities and all of them think it’s a massive step in the right direction. One of the things the Act did was it forces the government to appoint someone to oversee research in the rare cancer space, and rare cancers include brain tumours.
“Archie’s key ask on the TV the other day was that an additional lead is appointed which looks specifically at brain tumours. So my Bill was all rare cancers, including brain tumours. We don’t know who that person is – it may well be a brain tumour specialist. We don’t know yet.
“The person’s been appointed, but it’s not been confirmed yet, that’s my understanding.
“Archie’s ask was that someone should be appointed to organise research in the brain tumour space, and he’s right to ask for that of course. Ultimately, however, what he really wants is more money spent in this space and I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but he sees the appointment of that person as being a driver for doing that.”
On the communication between himself, Goodburn and Prime Minister Burnham so far, Dr Arthur added: “We’re in the process. I contacted Archie this morning just to figure out what we could do to support him with that.
“The new Secretary of State for Health, Yvette Cooper, has also asked to be part of that meeting with Archie. We wrote to her a week or two ago, just after she came into office. The Act has three key focuses, and we’ve written to her on each of those focuses.
“We’re now in our fourth Cancer Minister since Labour took power in July 2024. We wrote to the Secretary of State that we were slightly concerned with the change of Prime Minister, the change of Secretary of State for health, and the change in Cancer Minister.
“What does that mean for the delivery of that cancer plan? Because my Act is entirely within the cancer plan, and one of the three measures is appointing that national cancer lead. We’re slightly concerned that it’s only half a day per week for that person – we want it to be more.
“The Act asks that all cancer trials go in a single database and that all rare cancer patients go in a separate database. This is for NHS England and the idea being that on the NHS England app, when a trial becomes available for you, you press a button and it activates and you get access to the trial that way.
“That linkage is probably a year to 18 months away, so we wrote saying we want that to happen sooner.
“The third thing was around a review of how we incentivise rare cancer treatments to come to the UK for trials. That’s currently on a three-year timeline and we’re asking if that can happen sooner as well.
“These things come at no or low cost. It’s not necessarily that this is about spending huge amounts of new money, although that would be great. It’s also thinking about what we can do within the existing systems just to fine tune things to make them happen quicker.”
Dr Arthur proposed the idea of introducing tax incentives to pharmaceutical companies to bring trials to the UK, citing an example of one constituent of his who had had success in getting funding for a £70m trial.
He said: “We’re working within a finite budget, but I think there’s more the government could probably do to bring international work to the UK through tax incentives.
“It would be really good if, as a result of Archie’s meeting, we see in the budget at the end of this year that the government’s going to offer tax incentives for pharmaceutical companies to come to the UK.
“There’s a fantastic woman in my constituency called Faye Robertson who is a medic at Edinburgh University and NHS Lothian. She’s running a trial on brain tumour treatment for glioblastoma and she’s just won £70m to run that trial here in Edinburgh. They’ve already done some initial testing on models, and it shows that it’s extremely effective.
“The work could have started already, but it would have started overseas.
“Instead, she waited to get funders who were willing to fund it in the UK, and that slowed it down a bit. The government has to think about why that is. Why is it that things are a little bit slower to get started here?
“Why could a pharmaceutical company take that work overseas and get it started more quickly? The government’s already doing some stuff on this, but there’s probably more it can do.”
Bringing the topic onto a more local level in Scotland, Dr Arthur continued: “We do have to think about the wider support for people with rare cancers and brain tumours in Scotland.
“In February, the UK Government launched its 10-year cancer plan. It’s full of targets which the government has to meet, about England competing with European countries and getting them into the top quartile.
“There’s no similar plan in Scotland. I think the cancer strategy expires this year. There’s no replacement yet and there is a feeling within the sector that the Scottish strategy was more about a press release rather than something that was actually going to make a difference.”
Dr Arthur also highlighted the difference in cancer treatments available in Scotland and England, adding: “For that trial that Faye is running in Edinburgh, one of the things they have to do is genomic testing to test you and also your tumour.
“That testing isn’t really available in Scotland. A lot of the work has to get sent to England. It’s a real postcode lottery in England, but it is available.
“My point about the app and connecting people with trials and their own medical record – in Scotland, we don’t even have an app. The Act is great for patients in England and Archie’s right to say it could go further and do more, but we also have to think about what more we can do in Scotland. I think there’s much more to be done.
“What the government in Scotland is not responsible for is funding that discovery science in our university labs because that’s a reserved matter, but the clinical work which is happening in hospitals in Scotland, how trials work and how people access trials inside Scottish hospitals is absolutely a matter for The Scottish Government.
“Depending on the cancer type, sometimes you’re better off living in Scotland, or sometimes you’re better off living in England because of the availability of drugs in the NHS.
“I’ve met people in Scotland who say they’re thinking about moving to England because they can access a drug that would save their lives, and I’ve met people in England who say they’re thinking about moving to Scotland because a different drug is accessible here.
“If you’re on the wrong side of a border when it comes to accessing a drug, it’s the worst thing in the world. When you cross the border, your physiology doesn’t change, which means that a drug is magically no longer effective for you.”
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