A FATHER'S fight to end the ʻimmoralʼ system which saw his seriously ill daughter denied benefits has been taken to the floor of the House of Commons.
Ian Leech, from Branston, is campaigning for reform after his student daughter, Melissa, was told she must draw on her student loan to support herself or quit university — despite having to battle against the cancer which eventually claimed her life.
Burton MP Janet Dean, who has taken up Mr Leech’s fight, has told ministers it would be ‘immoral, unfair and unjust’ not to address the anomaly in the law which saw Melissa ineligible for benefits such as income support.
Speaking in a late night adjournment debate in the Commons on Tuesday, Mrs Dean said: “It is distressing enough for young people and their families to have to fight serious life-threatening illness, such as cancer, without having to abandon their university courses.
“They need the hope and expectation of returning to their studies when they recover.
“It is bad enough coping with the stress of diagnosis and treatment without the added pressure of the unfairness of the benefits system for students.”
James Plaskitt, a former Government minister at the Department of Work and Pensions, said the current regulations were ‘indefensible’ and that the issue had been the subject of ‘completely justifiable reform, repeatedly getting up to the last fence before, for some reason, falling’.
He said: “The research has been done and the case has been made.
“It is simply a matter of having the will to get over the last fence to remedy this clear injustice, which I hope will happen before this Parliament ends.”
Mr Plaskitt’s successor, Helen Goodman, said Mrs Dean had made ‘an eloquent case’ for reform of benefits law and said she did not think the cost of any such reform would be ‘a significant barrier to securing the change’.
Mrs Goodman vowed to seek guidance from medical experts, lawyers and university authorities to ‘simplify and improve the transparency’ of benefit law for students.
She said: “I do understand the unfairness to which my honourable friend refers. I want to be sure that if we make a change we get it absolutely right, and avoid in future the kind of distress caused in Melissa Leech’s case.”
Mr Leech said he was ‘definitely more encouraged’ about the prospects of reform after watching the debate on television.
He told the Mail: “It was quite humbling but also quite strange hearing Melissa’s name and my own mentioned in the House of Commons.
“It brought it all home again that she’s no longer with us, but I know that Melissa would have been proud because it was an issue she talked about and which she was very passionate about.”
Melissa, who studied psychology at Aston University, died in May 2008 after a nine-month battle with non- Hodgkin’s lymphoma.