Sir Mike Penning leads a debate in the chamber of the House of Commons on securing funding for research into the ultra-rare condition Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (FOP).
Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered funding for the prevention of fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva.
Thank you very much indeed, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am pleased you have pronounced it rather than me; from now on, perhaps we will just use FOP, which is what most people—including the families—call it, but the scientists do not.
FOP is a genetic condition; it is not an illness or a disease, as it is called all too often. It is very rare—one in a million. In this country, about 70 people alive have FOP, including about 30 young people and children. If we replicate that around the world, it is a very rare condition. The condition is probably the biggest nightmare for any parent, or anybody who loves a child.
Let me give an example: I played rugby, and I bruised very regularly. I stopped playing fairly recently, but when I did play rugby, I would bruise. For those who have FOP, there is a good chance that that bruise will turn to bone—skeletally, it will turn to bone. Most of us want our young children to be inoculated, and we have been through an inoculation process during covid, which I was very much involved with, but if someone with FOP has an injection there is a good chance that that trauma will turn to bone. I have circulated privately to the Minister, Mr Deputy Speaker and others some photographs of what that trauma can end up like and does end up like.
I got involved in this issue when a couple came to see me in my constituency and said, “Our daughter has FOP”—as a dyslexic person, I cannot say it to this day, although I have practised and practised. I had no idea what they were talking about. It is a bit like the previous debate: when we first heard about Primodos and the problems with it, most of us in this room had never heard of it. FOP is much rarer than the conditions suffered by the victims of Primodos that we have been talking about, or of mesh, valproate or any of those things, but the effects on those individuals and their families and loved ones are profound.
My constituent said to me that, as a mum, she looked at her baby and thought there was something wrong with her toes. The initial diagnosis from most paediatricians would be bunions—bunions on a new-born baby. My wife has bunions, but it is nothing to do with what she was born with; it is to do with the quality of the shoes she wore as a young lady. She will not mind me saying that, because we have discussed this case before. It is only sometimes, when people get in front of the right expert, that they get the diagnosis for what is a completely incurable, progressive condition and find out what they have. That is what happened with my constituents. There are three consultants in this country who have that capability, and they were lucky that they got in front of one. I pay tribute to the Portland Hospital where the diagnosis took place.
What does this mean for a young person? There are young people in the Gallery this afternoon who have the condition. I think the little ’un has gone home now because she was rather tired, and she helped me deliver a letter to the Prime Minister at No. 10 earlier today. What does it mean for them? It means that their whole life is different. Do we want to wrap our children up in cotton wool? No, of course we do not. Even if they have FOP, do we want to wrap them up in cotton wool? No, we do not, but they have to be extremely careful about inoculations, bruising, sport, and rough and tumble.
My constituents are very lucky. I have a very forward-thinking planning department in my local authority, which used the delegated powers it has to grant planning permission on the green belt—the green belt that I fight to protect in my constituency—so a specialist house could be built for Lexi, and she has the facilities where she can have the safe upbringing she needs. Lots of people were very worried about permission being given in that way because the condition is so rare, and I had people saying to me, “Are you really sure this baby’s got this condition, and is this not just circumventing the planning rules?”. It was only when I circulated some of the photographs, which many colleagues in the House have, that people said to me, “Okay, we get it,” and two of them actually said, “We’re really sorry. We get it.”
Because the condition is very often not visual in the early stages, there is no understanding of it. It is a bit like a mental health condition. We have much better ideas about mental health these days, but when we walk up to someone, we do not know whether they have such a condition. If people go up to Lexi today, they would not know that she has FOP, but they will do in the next few years, when it will become pretty obvious. The interesting thing about FOP is that there is no set plan or rule for it. In some cases it progresses very fast, the bone grows very quickly and the effects on the skeleton, movement and mobility are very quick, but in others there are short bursts of it, while sometimes there is nothing for years and then it will progress again.
Given the reason for this debate—and I apologise to the Minister, to whom I have spoken privately about this—I did not want the Minister for Health and Secondary Care on the Front Bench. I wanted the Minister for Science, Research and Innovation on the Front Bench. It is nothing personal, but this is not an NHS issue. It is a condition that needs scientific expertise in research and trials, which is in the Science Minister’s portfolio. I understand why, as soon as we start talking about anything to do with health, the Health Department goes, “That’s ours,” but on this particular occasion, it is not.
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
Can I just say that I concur with the right hon. Gentleman’s comments about research and health research? There is a concern about how it is being handled.
Sir Mike Penning
I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention.
Earlier, we had a short statement on Horizon, which was excellent in that the Science Minister was on the Bench, and when I asked the Secretary of State a few questions about FOP, he agreed to meet us in short time. The great news is that we will meet the Science Minister. The key to what was announced earlier is that work was being done before covid—and there is work on FOP being done around the world—and there was funding from Horizon for trials on FOP. The big issue was that covid interrupted the trials, not our leaving the EU. I am sure some colleagues will say, “Ah, that’s what it’s all about.” No, it was nothing to do with that; it was covid that affected it. I put that on the record straightaway, and we now have the great situation that Horizon is back on stream.
One of the reasons I wanted to see the Science Minister on the Front Bench was to ask him this question. Perhaps colleagues in his office can elaborate on this before I meet him. The trials were halted because of covid, but have we got to start from scratch again or can we move on with those trials? I am old-fashioned and I used to be called a Eurosceptic, but we are now out of the European Union, so that is great. One of the things that was said is, “Well, you don’t want to co-operate with Europe,” but of course we want to co-operate with Europe. The announcement today on Horizon is a classic example, and the classic example of why we have to collaborate not just with Europe but with America and other parts of the world is that this condition is so rare and we could not do trials here. The scientists in America have a much bigger base on which they are able to do trials, and we need to learn from them and they need to learn from us.
So it looks sensible that we will be back in the European trials, but I am petrified about whether we will have to wait for Horizon to announce bidding on a certain part of the scientific research, and then wait a couple of years for that decision to be made. That is what tends to happen with these projects, but we are already in the middle of the project.
In trying to work out the best route forward—I am not a scientist; I am looking at this as a dad—we need two things. Research is going on into how we prevent the progression of FOP in the bone structure when there are traumas, and whether there is something early on that we can turn off. Is there research out there that can predict that? At the moment there is not, I understand. We have two situations. Can we in some way look at the future and at anybody who, family-wise or genetically, is likely to get this condition? Secondly, if a child has got it, how can we slow down progression? The families here with me today, and those in FOP Friends, would argue that they have this condition so they need help and research now, but we also need research to prevent what is going on genetically.
It also worries me how we need to spread knowledge about FOP around the world, not just in this country. In some parts of the world, almost no FOP babies are born. Just on a law of averages, that is not possible, and it has already been proven that there is no cultural link. Some genetic conditions are linked to what part of the world someone might have come from, but apparently they have already done research on FOP, and that is not the case. What is happening in parts of the world where babies are not born deformed and people do not instantly know. That sort of research desperately needs to be done. Lots of work is being done in Boston and around the world, but it is key that we are back as an associate of Horizon. Can we start not from scratch but halfway through and where we were before covid hit the project?
In a perfect world, we in this Chamber, and the families, would like to be able to press a button, perhaps give a tablet, and stop this progression. It is the most awful thing to be sitting there, waiting for your child to perhaps have a bump, a bruise or a progression. As a group, FOP Friends make sure that everybody talks to everybody. It is better learning from other people who are in the same situation and not having to reinvent the wheel every five minutes. As I said earlier, people are desperate not to wrap their child in cotton wool, and to give them as much of a normal life as possible. Earlier I was talking to the chair of FOP Friends. He was playing badminton with his son who has got FOP, and I think he loses on a regular basis. There are things that can be done, but the problem with the condition is that it is not the same in every child. It will be different in every child, and it is different in its progression.
That is why this debate is so important, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for agreeing to it. It is not a normal sort of debate. We have had a debate in Westminster Hall on this issue, which has such a dramatic effect on the lives, futures, aspirations and dreams of those families whose lives are affected by FOP. I thought, and my colleagues thought—some of them could not be here today—that we should bring this subject to the Floor of the House, so that we could find out where this research is going.
Sir Mike Penning
What an excellent debate we have had. I apologise if I was in any way rude to the two Front Benchers when I said that I would have preferred the Science Minister. I will have the Science Minister later, so that is perfectly okay. I am very grateful to today’s Minister, who set out some things that we did not know.
On screening, if we know about this early, we will save the NHS money. I know that an independent body looks at rare diseases and conditions, but for this particular life-changing and life-shortening condition, the aspirations and dreams of parents are changed dramatically the earlier they know, because the earlier they know, the earlier we can get those at FOP Friends who have been through it themselves helping them. The more we can screen, the more we will find—the one in 1 million figure shows that we do not know about enough people, because it does not work that way—and the more chance we will have of getting consultants who specialise in this area, rather than the three that we have currently. The more active we are in this area, the more scientists will want to come to this country and work at Oxford with the team there, and with other teams. That means that there will be a future for the families who are so badly affected.
I am enormously grateful to the House and to the Backbench Business Committee for granting a debate on a subject that most people freely admit they knew absolutely nothing about until bits of paper came across from my office. In particular, I thank Jon Mole from my office, who has contacted nearly everybody’s office and said, “What more do you need?”, including those on the Front Bench, because it is really important that we have that knowledge. I remember saying to him the other morning, “Have you given that to so-and-so?”, and he said, “Yes, it’s already gone.” For instance, with the letter to the Prime Minister this morning, which I know the Minister received, I was told five minutes before coming into the Chamber that he had it.
There was a lovely moment outside No. 10 with the families and the affected children and young people. Little Lexi handing the letter in at the door of No. 10 was a very moving moment. Let us hope that with the ministerial meetings we are going to have and with the great news about having partnerships with Europe, rather than being run by Europe, which is really important, particularly with Horizon—[Interruption.] Members knew I would get that in. Let us hope that with those things and with the nations of this country and this great Parliament coming together and saying, “We need to do something about this,” we can do it. FOP affects so few people, but the scientific research could affect a lot of families and help them in the future.