Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment his Department has made of the comparative effectiveness of mRNA-based human papillomavirus primary cervical screening offers and DNA-based screening.

In November 2015, the United Kingdom National Screening Committee (UK NSC) recommended the use of human papillomavirus (HPV) as the primary screen test for cervical screening, replacing cytology-based screening, as it was more accurate in detecting cervical cancers.

Laboratories can choose to use either deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) or messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA)-based (HPV) testing platforms as both are approved for use in the national cervical screening programme.

Public Health England assessed the performance of both mRNA and DNA-based HPV testing platforms prior to their implementation in the national cervical screening programme. Both platforms were effective and performed to the level required. The type of HPV platform used does not have an impact on patient experience or effectiveness.