Christmas APPEAL
Chloe Smith MP recently found out she has breast cancer. Now she’s urging others to get checked, she tells Rosa Silverman
Earlier this month, government minister Chloe Smith interrupted the flow of politicsrelated messages on her Twitter feed to announce some personal news. “I’ve learnt I have breast cancer, & start treatment soon,” she wrote. “I aim to carry on as normally, positively & openly as possible – with a bit of support & privacy at times. Please, check for lumps & see your GP.”
The words were as matter-of-fact as Smith’s manner in person. The Tory MP for Norwich North, who is also constitution and devolution minister, is remarkably calm and composed when we speak shortly after her revelation on Zoom. Aged 38 and the mother of two children aged four and 18 months, she is briskly upbeat – and determined to remain so.
“I avoided thinking about [the possibilities],” she says of finding a lump in her right breast five weeks earlier. “I followed the steps in terms of GP appointment and then onwards to some hospital checks and decided I wouldn’t give a lot of time to thinking about it one way or the other. I just put one foot in front of the other.” Of course, the diagnosis itself came as a blow. Smith is young, fit and healthy; a keen cyclist and walker. She was shocked when she learnt she had cancer. “My husband had gone with me to the hospital appointment and we were both taken aback,” she says. “Then again, it genuinely is my normal attitude to be very practical, very positive and also to be quite open about it. I’m quite good at dealing with things in that way and can’t see any other way of doing it now.”
Her husband is Sandy Mcfadzean, a vice-president of investment bank Credit Suisse to whom she proposed in
2012 after dating him for four months. She said it had been “love at first sight” when she met the former soldier at a London charity ball. He had just completed a triathlon that day. They married in 2013 at a small ceremony in South Runcton, Norfolk, not far from where Smith grew up and attended state school.
She does not now intend to tell their two children “explicitly” about her cancer, which has not spread further, and for which she expects to begin chemotherapy in the coming weeks.
“It’s not the kind of conversation you can have with children of that age,” she says. “But part of my plan is to keep things as normal as possible for family life as well, because they need me in a different way.” Parenting young children while undergoing treatment “will get difficult,” she imagines. “Hopefully cuddles are the answer.”
After publicly announcing her illness, she received an outpouring of support from colleagues across the political divide, as well as from civil servants and constituents. Telling her nearest and dearest was perhaps a trickier ordeal.
“It’s difficult to tell your friends and family,” she says. “I was dreading phoning my mum and letting her know, because I knew it would upset her so much. And you’re aware that when you tell your friends, it’s quite a sledgehammer of a conversation: ‘Oh
hi, I’ve got cancer!’ That’s not a conversation that’s much fun… But obviously friends and family have also been incredibly supportive.”
Smith is well respected by her colleagues, beginning her parliamentary career at just 27 and moving through a series of ministerial positions since. She campaigned for Remain in the European Union referendum, but then backed Brexiteer Boris Johnson in the Conservative leadership race. She has also supported his lockdown measures, albeit “with a heavy heart”.
But one of the adverse effects of the national effort to control the spread of coronavirus has been that fewer patients have accessed non-covid NHS services. This is particularly true in secondary care, where waiting lists for vital hospital tests have grown, appointments have been cancelled or postponed, and treatments delayed.
Last month, Macmillan Cancer Support, one of the charities supported by this year’s Telegraph
Christmas Charity Appeal, warned that up to 50,000 people could be living with undiagnosed cancer as a result of delays caused by the pandemic. Experts estimated the backlog could take 18 months to clear as a best-case scenario.
Macmillan also estimated that 33,000 people in the UK who had received a diagnosis were yet to start treatment, while Cancer Research UK warned last month that 3 million people had missed vital screenings and more than 350,000 had not been urgently referred for a cancer check who should have been.
While some patients could not access the checks or care they needed, others had taken to heart the original lockdown message to “stay home, protect the NHS, save lives” and failed to get new symptoms checked. Doctors have spoken of the fear some patients have of coming into surgeries or hospitals while the virus is out there. It’s these people Smith hopes to reach in urging anyone with unusual symptoms to get checked.
“The core message right now is, if you find something unusual, feel unwell or have something that needs attention, go to get that appointment, go to get that thing checked out, whatever it may be,” she says. “It’s obviously incumbent on GPS and doctors to do their bit and help people with whatever is brought into the surgery. Whether that’s by phone, video call or in person, it doesn’t matter, the care is there.”
Unless, that is, you’re one of the unlucky ones for whom, this year, it has not been. We can surely ill afford a repeat of what happened in the spring, when some of those who did try to get things checked out struggled to get referrals?
“Well, that’s right and I’m certainly very sorry to hear that, for anybody who’s in that situation. It shouldn’t be that way. Every effort is being made nationally and as far as I’m aware [in] most hospitals, most trusts, to make sure people can be seen,” says Smith.
“The direction is being given from the very top that we should be able to make [sure] the NHS can provide cancer care right now as well as hopefully see off coronavirus, and that balance is exactly why we’re having to go through very heavy duty politics at the moment.”
As for coping with her own illness, she plans to “take it as it comes”.
She says: “I might be blissfully ignorant of what lies ahead. People are reassuring me and encouraging me that most people get through this and recover…
“That’s what I’ll be thinking about. I just have to go into it with my eyes open now, I don’t know exactly how it’s going to be.”
She will be effectively shielding; or, as she puts it, “lying low in order to prioritise the hospital appointments I’ve obviously now got to take very seriously.”
There is clearly no good time to be diagnosed with cancer, but it coming during a pandemic undoubtedly complicates things, not least given the increased vulnerability to coronavirus of those with underlying conditions. Yet Smith not only refuses to dwell on that, she manages to put a positive spin on the timing.
“I just feel practical,” she says. “It’s obviously now the wisest thing to lie low and do my work and meetings virtually. In a way you could almost say it’s quite convenient, actually, because everyone else is doing the same. That’s just what we’re all up to at the moment.
“I will say 2020 has been an absolute stinker. That’s true for many people now.” The brave and businesslike face she has on dissolves into a brief laugh. “It’s just been a dreadful year.”
‘I was dreading phoning my mum, I knew it would upset her so much’
Macmillan Cancer Support is one of four charities supported by this year’s Telegraph Christmas Charity Appeal. The others are Refuge, Cruse Bereavement Care and Carers UK. To make a donation, please visit telegraph.co.uk/appeal or call 0151 284 1927