Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help increase the uptake of cervical cancer screening.

To improve uptake of cervical screening, in some Primary Care Network areas, appointments can now be made in any Primary Care setting, rather than just at one’s own general practice during evenings and on weekends.

To further improve uptake, an evaluation on the acceptability and effectiveness of human papillomavirus (HPV) self-sampling is taking place. The YouScreen Study aims to provide evidence on the acceptability of self-testing and the HPValidate study aims to see if self-testing provides the same level of accuracy as an HPV test undertaken by a clinician.