Prostate Cancer Screening

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Monday 26th October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Dr Andrew Murrison (in the Chair)]

Order. Colleagues will note that the debate is vastly oversubscribed, and we will not be able to get everybody in. There will be a two-minute time limit on speeches and Front-Bench speeches will begin at 5.28 pm.

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[Rishi Sunak (Richmond and Northallerton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I declare an interest as an ambassador for Prostate Cancer Research. In the work that I do for that charity I have spent a lot of time in the community talking to people affected by prostate cancer and those organising drives, and I am humbled by the many men I have met for whom diagnosis has come far too late to make a difference to their life, but who have chosen to dedicate themselves to this issue and to raising awareness. I think that is extraordinary of them and, as I said, humbling. The most important thing we can do to honour them is to make sure no one else loses a father, grandfather or brother to this cruel disease.

I, like many other campaigners, was disappointed with the decision of the National Screening Committee. The Budget is not until Wednesday, but colleagues know I like numbers, so I dove into the model behind that decision and found a few issues that I hope the Minister will go back and have a look at. The model assumed treatment costs of around £27,000, but most independent estimates are far higher. The model assumed that only about a quarter of men received the most advanced drugs—again, audit figures suggest that twice as many do—and that they would not receive that treatment for more than three years, when the evidence is that they receive it for longer. All those gaps understate the positive case for screening that has been verified by the independent York Health Economics Consortium.

Further to that, we heard about the concern regarding overtreatment, but modern diagnostic pathways offer ways to reduce unnecessary treatment and diagnosis. Given the time available to us, we do not need to go into all the details, but the evidence this year from the Cochrane review that looked at 800,000 men’s experience, and from the Swedish study into the success of the new Stockholm3 trial, indicated that the evidence is moving faster than the committee is moving. I am delighted that the Government have committed to a living model. Will the Minister commit to publishing the workflow perhaps by January, so that we know when the model will be updated with the new evidence and what the workstreams are for that, particularly on the new survival assumptions and costs? Will she also open up the model, as National Institute for Health and Care Excellence does, to independent experts, because then we can have real scrutiny and debate the assumptions.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (in the Chair)]

Order. I call Alistair Strathern.

[Alistair Strathern]

I intervened.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (in the Chair)]

All right. I call Peter Prinsley.

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[Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)]

Many in this House will know my previous position, but I will use my speech to talk about things I understand and things I do not.

I understand why there is such a drive to pick up the screening programme. The numbers have been stated explicitly, and I understand why the Government are citing the evidence from the committee to make sure that this is measured. If there is a test that says someone may have cancer 75% of the time but does not pick it up 15% of the time, that is a matter of concern, especially when we read the statistics about 12 men in 1,000 tested being overtreated. Nobody has talked about what being overtreated means; it means a man who is perhaps 56 and asymptomatic suddenly suffering erectile dysfunction, though he never had a cancer that needed treatment. These are important points, and it is right that we expand the trial to understand more about what is going on.

Here is what I do not understand, which I will put to the Minister. The guidance for GPs has changed: formerly, when a man who was asymptomatic and over 50 requested a PSA, they could get it. We have a test that is not very good, and it is hard enough to get men in to see a doctor, but what are they most concerned about? Cancer. I have had those conversations; they understand the risks and still want that test. Why have the Government changed that, when their own consultation says:

“There was no simple way of knowing from the data whether a PSA test had been done because of a patient’s request for one, a GP’s concern about a patient’s symptoms, as part of post-cancer treatment follow-up, or active surveillance”?

The Government do not even know why PSA test access was changed. That is important. If a man goes in to ask for a PSA test, given everything he knows, he should have the right to that test until we get further information to tell him otherwise, because if I was that GP, I would be worried he would ask for my General Medical Council number and my name.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (in the Chair)]

I thank Members for their timekeeping and call Perran Moon.

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[Sarah Hall (Warrington South) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. In 2017, my constituent Tony Collier was training for an ultramarathon. Tony was 60, fit and otherwise well. He was the kind of man who rarely sat still long enough to think about his own health. He thought he had a groin injury from his training. He went to the doctor and was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. He was told that his cancer had been developing for around 10 years. In that moment, Tony’s life changed forever. Tony did not ignore symptoms; there were not any until it was too late.

I met Tony through his dedicated campaigning for earlier diagnosis. Along with another of my constituents, Paul, he set up the Warrington Area Prostate Cancer Alliance to support other men from Warrington living with prostate cancer. Tony is working with national cancer organisations to make the case for change so that more men like him and those at high risk can get this lifesaving test. Tony believes that if he had had regular PSA tests from the age of 50, there is a good chance he would have been diagnosed earlier, when his cancer was still curable. Tony does not campaign for sympathy; he campaigns so that other men do not have to rely on chance to find out that they have cancer.

I hope the Minister listens to Tony’s story and acts on the recommendations from Prostate Cancer Research, including by publishing a timetable for reviewing screening evidence by January 2027 and providing six-monthly updates on the model and clear decision points for black men, tied to stage one of Transform; by funding new research into who currently receives PSA tests, why and with what outcomes; by allowing independent experts to scrutinise the UK National Screening Committee’s model on terms equivalent to NICE; by publishing a protocol for confidential and emerging evidence applied consistently to every test and trial; and by confirming that a man aged 50 or over or at higher risk who has discussed the pros and cons with his GP remains entitled to a PSA test now that the PCRMP has been withdrawn.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (in the Chair)]

Well done, everyone; we got all the Back Benchers in.