The Liberal Democrat leader has described losing both his parents to cancer as a child as he called for a new legal right for patients to start treatment within two months of an urgent referral.
Sir Ed Davey told his party’s annual conference in Bournemouth that his father had died of Hodgkin lymphoma when he was four and his mother died of breast cancer when he was 15, leaving Davey and his two brothers orphaned.
Davey, 57, said he had to learn to administer morphine this mother and then visit her in a “totally unsuitable” dementia ward in her final days.
“She tried everything,” he said. “We looked after her. It was the hardest of course in the last 18 months or so as she became bedridden. The pain became excruciating. Me caring for her became my life; after school for hours on her bed talking to her, telling her about my day, listening to her stories, trying to make the most of three minutes. Even in the face of such a cruel disease, I like to think I learnt a lot from her.”
Cancer is no longer a “death sentence”, Davey said, but could still be handled “so much better” in Britain.
“I don’t tell you all this because I want you to feel sorry for me at all,” he said. “But ... my story is not unique. Far too many people are still waiting far too long for a diagnosis. Or to start treatment after being diagnosed. And, I’m afraid to say, they’ve been let down and forgotten by this Conservative government.”
He added: “We will hold the government to account for every target it misses, every patient failed. [We] will never stop fighting for better care.”
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Davey used his speech, at what could be the party’s last conference before the next general election, to claim that the Lib Dems had a unique opportunity to unseat the Conservatives in their former southern heartlands.
He repeatedly attacked the Tories, describing the government as a “soap opera” full of feuds, personal vendettas, “shock exits and unwelcome returns”.
He was notably less critical of Labour and rebuked the party only for its position on Europe and Brexit, which he described as “nowhere near” ambitious enough.
“Only we have set out a detailed plan to tear down those trade barriers, fix our broken relationship with Europe and get a better deal for Britain.” he said “Labour has a long way still to go, which means it’s up to us to lead the way — a better economy, a better future, with Europe.”
Davey said that recent Liberal Democrat by-election successes in Tory heartlands had been “historic”, adding that the next general election would not just be about Conservative-Labour contests in the red wall. “It’s about the blue wall too,” he said, “former Tory heartlands where we’ve shown we are the only ones who can win. We have taken chunks out of the blue wall, we have made it start to crumble — now let’s smash it for good.”
