November is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month. It is a disease that too few people are aware of in any detail, but, if it's something that's touched your family, you will be acutely aware of how devastating it is. I know that many of us contributing to this debate will be indebted to organisations like Pancreatic Cancer UK for sending us statistics, and I'd also like to put my thanks on record to them. Of course, those statistics are damning, particularly the statistics that illustrate how the odds are stacked against someone once they've finally been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. As we've heard, seven in 10 people with pancreatic cancer will never receive any treatment, and only one in 10 will receive surgery. But we have to remember that behind all those statistics are people, families who will be traumatised by the swift onset of this disease. It is too little understood, and, by the time it is diagnosed, it's usually too late to do anything.

Pancreatic cancer is the quickest-killing cancer and the cancer with the lowest survival rates. The figures are stark, but what's starker still is how doggedly static those figures are, that there has been so little improvement for decades in survival rates. Of course, there is no hierarchy of pain. Every cancer can be devastating, and every cancer can have seemingly miraculous stories, but there is a feeling that pancreatic cancer, the silent killer, also has the weakest voice when it comes to funding considerations, to research and to public understanding.

I support Pancreatic Cancer UK's call for there to be a national plan for pancreatic cancer to improve diagnosis rates, to raise awareness of the symptoms amongst the public and GPs, to get critical investment into research, so that diagnosis rates can be improved and the chances of survival increased for thousands of people.

The public awareness element of this is critical. My grandmother died of pancreatic cancer in January 2005. She'd been a little off-colour at Christmas, but, like so many patients who don't know that these symptoms are masking something deadly, she put off going to the GP. When she did go, no-one had recognised the symptoms. She wasn't alone in that—16 per cent of pancreatic cancer patients actually visit their GP seven or more times before getting a diagnosis. A few days after Christmas, she went to the GP again, and they didn't know exactly what was wrong but they sent straight to hospital. It was over the new year period, so the disease still wasn't spotted for too long. My grandmother was left calling out in delirium because of the pain, and when the symptoms were finally understood and the fantastic palliative care team came on board, she died three days later. She'd been in agony for weeks. It was incredibly distressing, for my mother, especially, because the disease seemed to come from nowhere, and yet, within days, nurses had to cut off her wedding ring because of the pain. She had only really been ill for three weeks. It was cruel, it was all-consuming.

I know that other members of my family, including me, are at a greater risk, because my grandmother died of pancreatic cancer, and her mother before her. We have to improve diagnosis of this horrible disease. More funding is urgently needed for research, as well as a dedicated awareness campaign about the tell-tale symptoms of the disease. Please, let's make this investment so that fewer people have to die like my mam-gu.