Prostate Cancer Screening Debate
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Alistair Strathern
Main Page: Alistair Strathern (Labour - Hitchin)Department Debates - View all Alistair Strathern's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
Prostate Cancer Screening
Alistair Strathern Excerpts(3 days, 22 hours ago)
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John Lamont
The hon. Member makes an important point about awareness and the challenge in rural areas. I will come to that later in my speech.
I am pleased that my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Northallerton is present, having done so much to advance this issue. As Prime Minister, his Government backed the £42 million Transform trial, providing £16 million of Government funding to examine different approaches to prostate cancer screening.
For the benefit of Members who are not aware, Transform is the largest prostate cancer screening trial in two decades. Designed and led by Prostate Cancer UK, with Government funding through the National Institute for Health and Care Research, it is comparing combinations of PSA blood tests, fast MRI scans and genetic saliva tests to find the safest and most effective way to detect prostate cancer before it becomes incurable. Crucially, it is designed to include far more black men than previous trials. With further Government funding announced this year, it is now worth around £60 million, and its first-stage results are expected before the end of 2027.
My right hon. Friend has since become an ambassador for Prostate Cancer Research and has called for a targeted national screening programme for the groups most at risk. Prostate Cancer Research says that the final UK NSC recommendation
“falls short of what is needed”,
arguing that too many high-risk men remain outside the programme.
Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)
I echo the hon. Gentleman’s praise for the former Prime Minister’s tireless campaigning on this issue. I have been deeply moved by many of my constituents whose lives were saved by early screening; all too often, though, that was the result of charity initiatives, because it was not available on the NHS. The hon. Gentleman rightly mentioned a lot of the advanced research in this area, which highlights every day how important screening is. Does he agree that the Government must continue to review the issue and see whether widening the screening criteria could save more lives?
John Lamont
The hon. Member is right. There is so much work and research going on in this area, and it is imperative that the Government acknowledge that work and react once more informed evidence becomes available.
The petitioners argue that the UK NSC has “fixated on potential harms” and underweighted the benefits of earlier detection, but there are good reasons why screening programmes face a higher evidential threshold. A raised PSA level does not by itself diagnose prostate cancer, but can cause anxiety and lead to further investigation. Screening can also result in overdiagnosis and unnecessary treatment, which can cause lasting harms. Prostate Cancer Research challenged the draft modelling, arguing that it relied too heavily on older evidence and did not adequately reflect modern MRI-led diagnostic pathways. The UK NSC says it considered those criticisms and updated its modelling before reaching its final recommendation.
