Commit to Beat Cancer - Frequently Asked Questions

Prior to the 2010 general election our supporters asked their Parliamentary Candidates to sign up to Commit to Beat Cancer. We had a fantastic response to this with 1043 Candidates signing up, translating into 261 of the current cohort of MPs pledging their support.

As a part of the commitment to help make the UK’s cancer outcomes among the best in Europe in the next 10 years, we asked Candidates to support concerted Government action in the following key areas:

• Detecting cancer earlier
• Providing world class treatment
• Preventing more cancers
• Tackling cancer inequalities
• Protecting the UK’s research base

The strong support we received for these commitments should help cancer to remain a high priority for the Government. But our work is far from done as in the coming months and years we work to ensure that this commitment is respected and acted upon.

We asked them to sign up to a commitment that contains our five campaign goals. If they made this commitment and have now been elected we know that we can call on them to help us beat cancer in the future.

By doing this we hope to raise awareness of Cancer Research UK and build support for our vision that together we will beat cancer. This will help us to reach our ambitious goal of making the UK’s cancer outcomes among the best in Europe in the next ten years.

We recently held a lobby of Westminster attended by 74 of our Cancer Campaigns Ambassadors based in England. Find out more about becoming a Cancer Campaigns Ambassador to take part in future high level campaigning activity or keep checking back on this website for upcoming online campaigning activity.

We will be launching the Commit to Beat Cancer campaign in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in the run up to devolved elections in May 2011. Keep up to date on online campaign actions on this website, or find out more about joining our fantastic Cancer Campaigns Ambassador programme to take action in your area in 2011 on this campaign.

Absolutely, each MP has a duty to listen to their constituent’s concerns, by getting involved and contacting your MP you will help us to show that there is widespread support for keeping cancer on the agenda in the future and through this we will be able to keep achieving the fantastic campaign successes we’ve had in the past. Every MP matters.