Former Labour minister Tessa Jowell speaks out about brain cancer for the first time and says 'I am not afraid'

Tessa Jowell has spoken out about her brain cancer for the first time and said: “I am not afraid”.

Baroness Jowell was diagnosed with a rare brain tumour known as glioblastoma in May last year and has been told there is no further treatment available to her on the NHS.

Quoting poet Seamus Heaney, the former Minister for Public Health and Culture Secretary spoke to the BBC ahead of taking a fight to parliament to bring innovative treatments available in other countries to the UK.

She will tell the House of Commons that the UK should introduce trial treatments and allow patients to stop anything that is not working early.

She told the Today Programme: "It got to the point in the NHS in London where I couldn't be given any more treatment but it was very clear that if I went to Germany then I had a chance of taking out this immunotherapy, a new experiment, I was and I am prepared to try that.

“I am absolutely 100 per cent trying to stay alive. That is exactly the kind of risk that patients should be free to take. It should be a risk that they have the chance to take and it's certainly what somebody like me wants.”

The former Labour minister will quote poet Seamus Heaney and tell former colleagues and MPs: “I am not afraid.”

During the interview she said: “I was deeply touched by Seamus Heaney's last words, when he said do not be afraid.

"I am not afraid. I feel very clear about my sense of purpose, and what I want to do, and how do I know how long [my life is] going to last? I'm certainly going to do whatever I can to make sure it lasts a very long time."

Baroness Jowell, who announced she had the disease on her 70th birthday last year, said she had received almost two and a half thousand “wonderful” letters of support from well-wishers.