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 prevent system errors occurring in the correspondence sent to women relating to cervical cancer screening.

Following the recent cervical screening incident, announced on 15 November 2018, Capita has confirmed they have put in place daily audits to ensure all women’s files are accounted for and are looking at how automated processes can be used to reduce errors. Additionally, the checks within the Capita call and recall service have been upgraded at every stage of the process and Capita has appointed an independent audit team to carry out a detailed review into operation systems and processes in Primary Care Support England.

I laid a Written Ministerial Statement on 15 November, HCWS1086, explaining the incident and the steps being taken to address it, offering reassurances to the women affected. All individual women affected have been written to directly and Capita has issued an apology.

NHS England has set up a multiagency clinical panel to manage the response to the incident and, separately, has announced an independent expert review into cancer screening programmes.