Peers’ standing ovation for speech

Dame Tessa Jowell was given a standing ovation after making an emotional plea for more cancer treatments to be made available through the NHS months before her death.

The Labour peer, whose death was announced yesterday, called for more opportunities for “adaptive trials” in which patients can undergo different treatments, and if one does not work they can move on to the next.

Baroness Jowell, whose voice cracked several times during her House of Lords speech in January, told of her diagnosis and subsequent battle to beat the disease.

Baroness Jowell, who was one of the Labour Party’s best known faces during Tony Blair’s era, went on to say how she had taken solace from Irish poet Seamus Heaney.

She said: “Seamus Heaney’s last words were do not be afraid. I am not afraid, but I am fearful that this new and important approach may be put into the ‘too difficult’ box.”

As Baroness Jowell concluded her speech peers, members of the public and Health and Social Care Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who was also in the chamber, rose to applaud. The tribute was thought to be the first of its kind in the Lords.