Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of integrating all at risk screening for breast cancer into the National NHS Breast Screening Programme.

Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The new and world-leading NHS National Inherited Cancer Predisposition Registry (NICPR), part of the National Disease Registration Service, will help the National Health Service to deliver proactive, targeted prevention, surveillance, and earlier diagnosis for people and their families. Women at Very High Risk (VHR) of breast cancer are now identified within the NICPR and referred into the NHS Breast Screening Programme (NHSBSP), which has enabled reconciliation to ensure that all identified women are safely referred into the programme. This is a step towards a fully electronic referral VHR process into the NHSBSP.

The Government is advised on all screening matters by the UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC), an independent scientific advisory committee which is made up of leading medical and screening experts. Where the UK NSC is confident that offering screening provides more good than harm, they recommend a screening programme.

In 2022 the remit of the UK NSC was expanded to include targeted, and risk stratified screening, in addition to population screening. So far, the UK NSC has not made a recommendation for targeted screening of women at a moderate or high risk of breast cancer.

Currently, if women reach the criteria for moderate or high- risk screening with surveillance recommended, this is offered as part of screening provision managed locally with NHS trusts.

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