Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will request Public Health England to extend its planned symptoms campaigns, as part of the Public Health England Marketing Strategy for 2014-17, to include cervical cancer symptoms.

Earlier diagnosis is essential to improving cancer survival and Be Clear on Cancer (BCOC) campaigns, which aim to raise awareness of the symptoms of specific cancers, and to encourage people with symptoms to see their doctor promptly, form an integral part of the Public Health England Marketing Plan for 2014-17 which was published in July 2014.

The decision on which cancers should be the focus of BCOC campaigns is informed by a steering group chaired by NHS England’s National Clinical Director for Cancer. Membership of the group includes primary care clinicians and representatives from the Department; Public Health England (PHE - Marketing team and the National Cancer Intelligence Network); NHS England; NHS Improving Quality; Cancer Research UK; Macmillan Cancer Support; and other stakeholders. A number of factors are taken into account when deciding which campaigns to develop and run, with one of the main criteria being the number of deaths that could be avoided through earlier diagnosis. The focus for national campaigns so far has therefore been on bowel, breast (in women over 70), bladder/kidney, lung, oesophageal and stomach (oesophago-gastric) cancers.

PHE has announced that a repeat of the national breast cancer campaign for women aged 70 and over will run in the summer from 13 July to 6 September 2015. Decisions on further BCOC campaign activity in 2015/16 will be made in due course based on evidence from previous campaigns.

PHE working with the Department, NHS England and other partners will continue to keep these campaigns under review and work with relevant experts to see what might be done to tackle other types of cancer.