Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to help prevent cervical cancer.

The National Health Service’s cervical screening programme provides all women and people with a cervix between the ages of 25 and 64 years old with the opportunity to be screened routinely to detect certain types of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) infection, which is the cause of 99.7% of cervical cancer.

In England, the HPV vaccination programme and the NHS cervical screening programme together aim to reduce the number of individuals who develop invasive cervical cancer, and reduce the number of people who die from it. There has been an 87% reduction in cervical cancers in women who were vaccinated between the ages of 12 to 13 years old against HPV, when compared to previous generations.

England has signed up to the 2030 targets of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Global Strategy to Eliminate Cervical Cancer, and the NHS Cervical Cancer Screening Programme aligns with the WHO’s target of 70% of women screened using a high-performance test by 35 and 45 years of age.

Additionally, NHS England set out an ambition to eliminate cervical cancer by 2040 and is working with stakeholders to increase access to and uptake of the HPV vaccination in school aged children, and has initiatives underway to support improving access and uptake of the NHS cervical screening programme. Further information on the ambition to eliminate cervical cancer by 2040 is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/2023/11/nhs-sets-ambition-to-eliminate-cervical-cancer-by-2040/