Cancer fighter’s petition scrapped

The decision to call a general election has dealt a blow to a Perthshire woman’s bid to protect cancer treatment trials after Brexit.

Fi Munro from Perth, who has been fighting terminal cancer, started a petition calling on the government to make sure there were no threats to trials after the country leaves the EU.

But with the dissolution of parliament this week, her 1000-strong petition has been erased.

In September 2018, Fi stopped paying for private treatment and become the first, and only, ovarian cancer patient in Scotland to take part in an NHS ‘triplet’ immunotherapy trial. As part of this trial she receives the drugs Durvalumab, Avastin and Olaparib.

With her late-stage ovarian cancer currently abated, but not stopped, Fi is determined that these valuable opportunities to buy more time will not disappear for other cancer survivors after Brexit.

She hoped that if she got enough signatures, the next step would be for the issue to be debated in parliament.

But this week she got a letter telling her that with MPs stepping down for the election on December 12, all petitions vying for debate in the House of Commons have been closed early.

The petition she started will not re-appear when a new parliament is appointed will have to start again from scratch.

She received an email on Tuesday telling her the petition would close just after midnight on November 6.

The email added: “We’re sorry we weren’t able to give you more notice that this would happen.”

Campaigning Fi - whose blogs on living with cancer are followed by around 10,000 people on combined social media - has previously stripped to her underwear in public to highlight her cause and wrote the inspiring book, ‘How Long Have I Got?’.

Fi told the PA: “I feel really disappointed with our government. We worked really hard to help ensure