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 improve early breast cancer diagnosis.

Improving early diagnosis of cancer, including breast cancer, is a priority for the Government. The National Health Service will hit all cancer waiting time targets, so that no patient waits longer than they should.

As the first step to ensure faster diagnosis, the NHS is delivering an extra 40,000 operations, scans, and appointments each week. To support early detection and diagnosis, the NHS in England carries out approximately two million breast cancer screens each year in hospitals and mobile screening vans, usually in convenient community locations.

All women between 50 and 71 years old have the opportunity to be screened every three years for breast cancer, to help detect abnormalities and intervene early to reduce the number of lives lost. Additionally, United Kingdom guidelines recommend that women with a moderate or high risk of breast cancer, because of their family history, should start having screening mammograms every year in their forties.

On World Cancer Day, the Government announced a major world-leading trial to demonstrate whether artificial intelligence (AI) can help doctors catch breast cancer earlier to enable faster treatment and save more lives, while freeing up valuable resources and capacity. Thirty testing sites across the country will be enhanced with the latest digital AI technologies, ready to invite women already booked in for routine screenings on the NHS to take part.