Prostate Cancer Screening Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department of Health and Social Care
Ian Sollom
Main Page: Ian Sollom (Liberal Democrat - St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire)Department Debates - View all Ian Sollom's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
Prostate Cancer Screening
Ian Sollom Excerpts(3 days, 12 hours ago)
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Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Dr Murrison. I am particularly proud to have my constituent Dave Young in the Gallery today. Dave was diagnosed with prostate cancer without symptoms in 2024, following a PSA test, and he has since dedicated himself to helping other men catch theirs early. Around 350 men have been directly tested through his campaigning in and around St Neots, and at an event in September, 122 men were seen in a single day. Of the six investigated afterwards, four have had cancer confirmed, so I thank Dave.
The best tribute that we can pay to Dave and other campaigners like him is to get the policy right. I challenge the Minister on whether the National Screening Committee’s modelling back in May actually did that. The committee judged screening against a threshold of £20,000 per quality-adjusted life year, but since April, NICE can approve a medicine for advanced prostate cancer at up to £35,000. Analysis commissioned by Prostate Cancer Research showed that treating a man diagnosed at stage 4 costs roughly 10 times as much as stage 1, so the NHS will pay more to treat this cancer once it is incurable than it is prepared to pay to find it earlier. That does not seem consistent.
The case against wider screening rests on harms, overdiagnosis and unnecessary treatment. I will not repeat what Members have said on the statistics for that, but I would like to ask whether the screening was judged as the NHS would actually deliver it today, with MRI scans, or as it was delivered 20 years ago. Can the Minister publish the model on terms equivalent to NICE, so that independent experts can test it and give a dated timetable for reconsidering the decision? Dave and other men campaigning on the issue would very much appreciate that.