Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans she has to help improve breast screening uptake.

NHS England has developed an internal national plan in collaboration with key stakeholders, to improve uptake within the breast screening programme from 2023 and beyond. This plan will encompass a series of evaluative projects, which are expected to report by April 2024. It is available on the NHS Futures Platform. This is a collaboration platform that empowers everyone working in health and social care to safely connect, share, and learn across boundaries.

The Government has invested £10 million of funding for the breast screening programme, which provided 28 new breast screening units and nearly 60 upgrades, to be targeted at areas with the greatest challenges of uptake and coverage. This will provide extra capacity for services to recover from the impact of the pandemic, boost uptake of screening in areas where attendance is low, tackle health disparities, and contribute towards higher early diagnosis rates in line with the NHS Long Term Plan.