Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Maria Caulfield]

I thank my right hon. Friend and male colleagues on the Government Benches, including my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher), who are fighting so hard to improve men’s health. He is absolutely right: 12,000 men a year die from prostate cancer. That is why we are investing in the £16 million prostate cancer trial called Transform, using methods such as MRI to detect prostate cancer rather than PSA, which can be inaccurate. Thousands of men will be recruited. We are hoping that the trial will start in the spring, with recruitment in the autumn, including the recruitment of black men, who are disproportionately affected by prostate cancer.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Does the Minister agree, however, that the information she has just given about why screening for prostate cancer does not happen for men is based on a study that is 20 years old? There are 12,000 deaths a year—it is the biggest killer among men, and the second biggest killer among all people—yet here is this evil cancer for which there is no screening programme whatsoever. Will she take steps to update current NHS guidance to ensure that all those at high risk of prostate cancer receive a targeted early detection service? I think she has hinted that she may be doing that, but will she finally introduce mass screening for prostate cancer? It is the only cancer without specifically commissioned early diagnosis work, and men are dying unnecessarily because of the failure to bring this in.

[Maria Caulfield]

We have more than hinted: we have just announced a £16 million pilot study of prostate cancer screening. We have a plan to tackle those 12,000 deaths a year, and it will work, because until now we have not had a diagnostic test. PSA is not a sensitive test in all prostate cancers: there are many men with prostate cancer who do not express PSA. That is why the Transform study, using detection tools such as MRI, will be trialled, and if they are effective, such tools will be rolled out across the country.