Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps the Government is taking to reduce the number of avoidable deaths from breast cancer.

The Cancer Outcomes Strategy set out our ambition to save an additional 5,000 lives per year by 2014-15 and is backed with more than £750 million, including more than £450 million to achieve early diagnosis by improving public awareness of the symptoms of cancer and improving access to key diagnostic tests.

Public Health England, working with the Department and NHS England, ran a national Be Clear on Cancer campaign on breast cancer in women over 70. The campaign aimed to improve awareness of the signs and symptoms of breast cancer and urge people with relevant signs and symptoms to visit their general practitioner promptly.

Screening is an important way to detect cancer early and the National Health Service Breast Screening Programme (BSP) invites women aged 50 to 70 every three years. We want to expand the NHS BSP so that more women can make the important choice to take part, so the programme is currently being extended to women aged 47-49 and 71-73 as part of a major research trial. Results on the impact of the extension on breast cancer mortality will be known in the early 2020s.