Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mohammad Yasin and Caroline Dinenage

Thursday 20th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

5. What recent discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on the adequacy of the breast cancer screening programme.

[The Minister for Care (Caroline Dinenage)]

Our breast cancer screening programme provides a world-leading service, inviting more than 2.5 million women for a test each year, detecting cancer earlier and saving lives.

[Mohammad Yasin]

The independent breast screening review found that a lack of clarity over when women should receive their invitations had caused the error that resulted in 67,000 women not being invited to their final breast screening. Will the Government implement the review’s recommendations and introduce guidance to clarify the ages at which women should be invited for routine screening?

[Caroline Dinenage]

The hon. Gentleman is right. The review found that the breast screening incident that was made public in May had arisen because of a lack of alignment between the national service specification and the way in which the programme was being run in practice. As a result, NHS England has announced a comprehensive review of cancer screening programmes, to be undertaken by Professor Sir Mike Richards. We will take account of the findings of both that review and our own breast screening review to ensure that changes improve the whole system.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mohammad Yasin and Caroline Dinenage

Thursday 29th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Care (Caroline Dinenage)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising the fact that this is National Autism Week. We are all wearing our badges with pride, and I hope that he will take part in the Back-Bench debate on this subject later today. He is right to say that girls get diagnosed later and less frequently than boys, and this is something that we are looking at very carefully as we renew our work on the autism strategy.

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

T6. Sir Robert Devereux, the former permanent secretary at the Department for Work and Pensions who oversaw the increase in the state pension age for women born in the 1950s, retired in January. My constituent, Paulette, a former NHS worker, wants to know why, having made national insurance contributions for 45 years, she will have to work until she is 66 to get a pension of £159 a week, while Sir Robert has retired with a taxpayer-funded pension of £85,000 a year at the age of 61.