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 improve early detection of prostate cancer through screening.

Screening for prostate cancer is currently not recommended by the UK National Screening Committees (UK NSC). This is because of the inaccuracy of the current best test Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA). A PSA-based screening programme could harm men as some of them would be diagnosed with a cancer that would not have caused them problems during their life. This would lead to additional tests and treatments which can also have harmful side effects.

The UK NSC is currently carrying out an evidence review for prostate cancer screening; this includes different potential ways of screening the whole population from 40 years of age onwards, and targeted screening programme aimed at groups of men identified as being at higher-than-average risk such as those with a family history, carriers of the BRCA2 gene and based on ethnicity.

In addition, we are working with Prostate Cancer UK to launch the TRANSFORM trial. The £42 million nationwide screening study will compare the most promising tests to look for prostate cancer in men that do not have any symptoms.