Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has conducted a cost-benefit analysis of offering routine prostate-specific antigen testing to high-risk groups.

The Government is guided by the independent scientific advice of the UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC). It is only where the offer to screen provides more good than harm that a screening programme is recommended. The UK NSC makes its recommendations based on internationally recognised criteria and a rigorous evidence review and consultation process. The UK NSC is currently considering the responses to a public consultation on their draft recommendation to:

- offer a targeted national prostate cancer screening programme to men with confirmed BRCA1/2 gene variants every two years, from the age 45 years old to age 61 years old;

- not recommend population screening;

- not recommend targeted screening of black men;

- not recommend targeted screening of men with family history; and

- collaborate with the Transform trial team to answer outstanding questions on screening effectiveness for black men and men with a family history, as soon as trial data becomes available, and await the results of the study to develop and trial a more accurate test than the prostate specific antigen test alone, to improve the balance of the benefits and harms of screening.

The evidence that supports this recommendation can be found on the following link:

https://nationalscreening.blog.gov.uk/

The modelling used to arrive at the recommendation included cost benefit analysis.