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 increase bowel cancer screening rates; and whether he plans to increase bowel cancer screening targets.

The National Health Service is in the final stages of changing the screening age for the Bowel Cancer Screening Programme, from those between 60 to 74 years old to those between 50 to 74 years old by 2025, which will increase the numbers being screened.

NHS England has updated the programme’s standard for uptake, increasing the acceptable and achievable thresholds, to acknowledge that uptake has increased by approximately 10% since introducing the Faecal Immunochemical Test.

A new standard will be introduced to monitor uptake for those aged 60 to 74 years old and those aged 50 to 59 years old. The revised standards will soon be published and available in the public domain. The current standards are available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/bowel-cancer-screening-programme-standards/bowel-cancer-screening-programme-standards-valid-for-data-collected-from-1-april-2018