Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps the Government is taking to improve breast cancer screening in Colne Valley constituency.

NHS England has developed a national plan in collaboration with key stakeholders, including Cancer Alliances, to improve uptake within the breast screening programme. The plan sets out the priorities and interventions, as well as the required monitoring of the impacts and outcomes to be achieved, to improve uptake through expanding access, data, analytics, contracting, communication, and IT developments, while reducing inequalities.

On a local level, the Kirklees Health and Care Partnership has worked with local public health services to collaborate with homes and neighbourhood housing, to identify areas of low uptake of breast, bowel, and cervical screening, and areas of deprivation combined with areas of council housing. This has resulted in homes and neighbourhood staff actively delivering a pilot focused on promoting the benefits and importance of screening. Working with tenants to understand their level of understanding of screening, their challenges, and the barriers to attendance, and working to overcome these barriers.

Local public health services have also recently launched a breast screening campaign titled Don’t let it be you, which aims to encourage people eligible for breast screening to go for their screening, and not ignore their letter.