Breast Cancer Screening

Maria Miller Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I do not know the answer to that question, but I will look into it. If we find that the uptake was lower than expected in that age group, it will be a very important clue about something that may have gone wrong, and I am sure that the review panel will want to examine it. The overall uptake rate is about 80%, but I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we should look into what the rates were in specific age cohorts.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his measured statement, and for all he is doing to ensure that the women affected are given the treatment and support that they need. I particularly welcome his independent review of the NHS screening programme. Will he also be looking at quality assurance programmes more widely within the NHS in relation to screening programmes? It is deeply worrying that the NHS did not identify this error for more than a decade, and there may be a need to review those programmes.

[Mr Hunt]

I am afraid that my right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The truth is that we do have a quality assurance programme, and it failed to pick up this problem for far too long. We need to understand why that happened. We think that a single IT mistake was made at the very start of the programme, and we understand that sometimes such mistakes are devilishly difficult to identify. None the less, as was suggested by the hon. Member for Stockton South (Dr Williams), there must have been clues that could have been picked up—or so one would think—and we need to get to the bottom of that.