Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate his Department has made of the number of people awaiting an invitation for breast cancer screening.

This data is currently not held in the format requested.

The number of women receiving breast screening over the course of 2020/21 will be available to the public and the Department on 24 February, when NHS Digital publish Official Statistics for the NHS Breast Screening Programme in England for 2020/21. This will be available at the following link:

Breast Screening Programme - NHS Digital

NHS England and NHS Improvement have advised that volume of invitations going out for breast screening are now greater than pre-pandemic levels and services have increased capacity, backed by additional financial investment, including putting on evening and weekend clinics.