Scope's reply to the governments planned concessions to the green paper.

I completely share your concern. When they say “most serious conditions,” it often feels like shorthand for “dying imminently.” But that ignores the daily battles faced by those of us living with incurable illnesses that do not fit that simplistic frame.

I live with incurable blood cancer. For more than two and a half years, I required blood transfusions twice a week to survive. After transfusion, I would get perhaps two days of minimal improvement before everything would unravel again. Walking became agonising, my muscles were starved of oxygen, and I would zonk out mid-conversation, completely unable to stay awake. My consultant explained this was not sleep but my body shutting down to preserve oxygen for my major organs.

My immune system is severely compromised. Over the years, I have undergone chemotherapy, blood and platelet transfusions, and intravenous immunoglobulin therapy just to keep infections at bay. I have had sepsis twice. And yet, because I was not actively receiving chemotherapy or radiotherapy at a given moment, the system could deem me “not in need” of assistance. My MP was visibly shocked when I explained this, she had assumed cancer is automatically protected. But that protection ends the moment chemotherapy or radiotherapy stops, even though the reality of still living with cancer does not.

This is not a loophole. It is a deliberate narrowing. And it will exclude people by design, not by oversight.

In her email to me on Tuesday, my MP said she is making enquiries into how blood cancer is treated under these criteria. Hopefully she will have more clarity when I see her this Saturday at the post-vote meeting. But I am also considering writing to Stephen Timms, because if our system cannot tell the difference between surviving and being well, then it is not safeguarding anyone. It is saving money at people’s expense.