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Introducing the debate, the SNP's Lisa Cameron gives a recap to MPs of some of the main recommendations of a cross-party parliamentary group on cancer.

One is the "immediate decoupling" of government funding commitments to Cancer Alliances - local groups that manage cancer care - from meeting a 62-day waiting time target for starting treatment.

Evidence received by the parliamentary group from front line services amounted to "a call for help", she adds.

But the strategy overall has had "positive effects", she says, including that 23 NHS trusts have now received upgraded radiotherapy machines.

She also pays tribute to the courage shown by her own uncle in coping "right till the end" with pancreatic cancer, which recently took his life.

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That's the debate on the role of disabled people in promoting economic growth finished.

Next up, MPs are debating NHS England's strategy for diagnosing and treating cancer.

The guidelines, launched in 2015, aim to improve survival rates by ensuring earlier diagnoses.

It has the target of allowing an additional 30,000 patients per year to survive cancer for ten years or more by 2020.

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The Minister for Disabled People, Sarah Newton tells MPs that, in her job, she has the "privilege" of meeting "disabled people doing extraordinarily good work".

She notes that there are 13m disabled people in the UK who are spending 250bn pounds.

"If businesses are not accessible," she says, "they're missing out on a great deal of business".

She says there are 600,000 more disabled people in work than four years ago but the government "wants to go further and faster".

And she shares another statistic - only half of disabled people who would like to be in work are in work.

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Shadow work and pensions minister Marsha de Cordova says there are 11.6m disabled people in this country, "people like me". She is partially sighted.

She says "Tory austerity" has had a "disproportionate impact" on disabled people and that her party will "build an economy that includes everybody".

She also takes on the Chancellor, Phillip Hammond who caused a storm at a committee hearing in December where he suggested that more disabled people in the workforce may have contributed to low productivity, external. She says that there has been "no apology for these comments" and that "scapegoating" disabled people for a problem caused by the government "speaks volumes".

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Liberal Democrat MP Jamie Stone, a former member of the Scottish Parliament whose wife is disabled, says he is "proud" to have played a part in ensuring disabled access to the Scottish Parliament.

The Church of Scotland's General Assembly building on the Mound in Edinburgh was chosen as a temporary home for the parliament when devolution was introduced in 1999.

However, Mr Stone says, "the top of the Royal Mile was completely unsuitable for anyone who was disabled".

The purpose-built Scottish Parliament building in Holyrood, approved under a Labour and Liberal Democrat coalition, has "complete disabled access", Mr Stone says.

"It very nearly cost me my seat... such was the controversy over the cost of the Scottish Parliament," he tells the House.

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Conservative Bim Afolami says when he's asked why he got into politics he says he wants to "enable everybody, whatever their god given talent, to contribute".

He says the government must "do everything we can to get everybody who has a disability into work where possible" which he says is at "the heart of social mobility".

He says the Conservative Party's 2017 election manifesto committed the party to getting one million more disabled people into work within a decade.

Mr Afolami says that if disabled employment increases by just 5% that would produce an extra £23bn in the economy.

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Liberal Democrat MP Stephen Lloyd says "most businesses got over" the costs of improving disabled customer access to their premises.

"If you make something successful" you recover the costs of improving access, he argues.

However, it is more difficult when it comes to enabling access to employment, he adds, with disabled people facing challenges "to get over the threshold and actually get that job".

"Half of all households in poverty have at least one disabled person in the household," Mr Lloyd says.

He also criticises cuts to support for the work-related activity group (WRAG) of the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA)., external

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Lisa Cameron goes on to say that it's not just about finding a job but "ensuring an environment" which keeps disabled people in work.

"We must ensure that employers are open to employing people with disabilities," she says.

At the moment, 49 per cent of working age people with disabilties are in work, compared to 80 per cent among people without disabilities.

Calling for urgent action, Lisa Cameron says: "We can't afford to sit and wait."

"Our economy can't afford to sit and wait either," she adds.

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SNP spokeswoman Lisa Cameron, opening the debate, says policy and "attitudinal" changes are needed to increase the number of disabled people in the workplace.

She argues that there will not be a significant increase in numbers "unless employers are encouraged to up their game", adding: "Reasonable adjustments are key."

According to the government,, external equality law stipulates that "employers must make reasonable adjustments to make sure workers with disabilities, or physical or mental health conditions, aren’t substantially disadvantaged when doing their jobs".

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We now come to the first of today's debates on topics chosen by the Backbench Business Committee, external.

It concerns the "role of disabled people in economic growth".

The motion for debate says:

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Justice Minister Rory Stewart agrees that conditions in HMP Liverpool were "shocking" and it is right that ministers should be held accountable.

"Without this kind of scrutiny standards can drop, and standards dropped very seriously in Liverpool prison," he tells the House.

"We want our prisons to be smart and well-functioning," he adds, telling MPs that the government is recruiting and training more prison officers.

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HM Inspectorate of Prisons concluded in a report last month that conditions in Liverpool jail were "squalid" with rats, cockroaches, blocked toilets and pools of urine.

How did Liverpool prison become the UK's worst jail?

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Bob Neill, the chairman of the Justice Committee, makes the next select committee statement.

His committee's report , externalfollows a damning report by HM Inspectorate of Prisons following an unannounced inspection of Liverpool prison.

Mr Neill says conditions at Liverpool prison were described as "squalid".

"At the moment the Prison Service marks its own homework," the Conservative MP says.

"That is not satisfactory."

The inspectorate should instead follow up on its work and ministers should take direct responsibility, he adds.

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Conservative MP Philip Hollobone argues that UK policy towards the Kurds "has been wrong for about 100 years".

Mr Tugendhat agrees that "Britain's history has not been good" in this area, with "one Winston Churchill" overseeing the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds.

"I'm afraid it is true - we don't always have a glorious history," Mr Tugendhat continues.

However, he insists that the UK's role in the region now is as "peacemaker".

Warren Dockter, a research fellow at the University of Cambridge and the author of Winston Churchill and the Islamic World, has said: "What he (Churchill) was proposing to use in Mesopotamia was lachrymatory gas, which is essentially tear gas, not mustard gas."

Read more about the 10 greatest controversies of Winston Churchill's career.

Between 25 and 35 million Kurds inhabit a mountainous region straddling the borders of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran and Armenia. They make up the fourth-largest ethnic group in the Middle East, but they have never obtained a permanent nation state.

Read more.

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Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Tom Tugendhat makes a statement on a report on "Kurdish aspirations and the interests of the UK".

The committee's inquiry asked the government "to account for exactly which Kurdish groups the UK has supported in the war to defeat Daesh" (another name for so-called Islamic State).

The inquiry also asked what support has been given and how it might affect the "situation on the ground".

The statement follows the entry of Syrian pro-government forces into the Kurdish enclave of Afrin, provoking an immediate response from Turkish forces besieging the area.

In neighbouring Iraq, Mr Tugendhat says, "many Kurds feel imprisoned in a country that they see as not implementing its commitments to equality towards them".

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The Bishop of St Albans asks his urgent question on the situation in Eastern Ghouta in Syria, which has been under fierce bombardment from government forces backed by Russian airpower.

Foreign Office Minister Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon repeats an expression used by the UN Secretary General: "Eastern Ghouta has become hell on earth."

He calls on Russia to agree to a UN Security Council resolution to allow humanitarian access.

The Bishop of St Albans says more than 300 people have been killed "in the last few hours" and claims that hospitals have been "deliberately" targeted.

If the resolution is not agreed, he continues, what further pressure can be applied to the Syrian regime?

Lord Ahmad pledges that the UK government will keep up pressure on the Syrian government and on Russia.

Labour peer Lord West says that in his view, while there are victims of Syria's civil war, "there are no good guys" among the perpetrators and "both sides are horrible".

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Shadow leader of the house, Labour's Valerie Vaz congratulates Stormzy, a winner at the Brit Awards last night.

During his performance at the awards, he asked: "Where's the money for Grenfell?"

The SNP's Pete Wishart also lauds Stormzy, saying it's "great that our artists are reminding the government to do the right thing".

He also mocks Brexit Secretary David Davis' assertion that Brexit won't be a "Mad Max style dystopia" by asking which other "dystopian nightmares" the government will rule out?

On Grenfell, Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom says that "resolving the appalling tragedy to enable people to carry on with their lives...is an absolute priority for the government and it will remain so."

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Former Northern Ireland Secretary Lord Hain says he is worried that the Northern Ireland peace process is "unravelling".

Following a question in the Lords about progress to break the deadlock and restore power-sharing in Northern Ireland, the Labour peer says ministers have said many times that "an agreement is about to be achieved", while he and others have not believed them.

Lord Hain tells the House he is "deeply, deeply concerned that this whole thing is unraveling", adding that the Good Friday Agreement "took years and years to achieve".

He also adds his voice to criticism of Brexit supporters, including fellow ex-Northern Ireland Secretary Owen Paterson, who have questioned the future of the agreement.

Northern Ireland Minister Lord Duncan of Springbank replies that the Good Friday Agreement is "the cornerstone of the UK government's position" - and he is happy to "distance" himself from comments from Mr Paterson and others.

He adds that he does not believe "that we are at the end of this process" calling on the parties to get together and restore devolved government.

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Andrea Leadsom goes on to congratulate Gary Oldman on his BAFTA and Britain's medal winning winter Olympians.

She also welcomes the new Lady Usher of the Black Rod Sarah Clarke, the first woman to hold the office in the UK.