Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential benefits of introducing national screening for prostate cancer.

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, the 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, which 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, or based on ethnicity.