Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of allowing women over the age of 65 to request a cervical smear.

There are currently no plans to make an assessment of the cost-effectiveness of extending the age of the National Health Service’s cervical screening programme beyond 65 years old. The UK National Screening Committee reviewed the evidence to screen women over 65 years old for cervical cancer in 2019, and due to the lack of evidence, no recommendation was made on changing the age at which women exit the programme.

People over the age of 65 years old who have not had a positive human papillomavirus (HPV) cervical screening result recently are not invited back for screening. Evidence suggests that it is very unlikely that they will develop cervical cancer over the age of 65 years old if they are HPV negative.

Anyone aged 65 years old or older continues to be screened within the NHS cervical screening programme if one of the last three screening tests was abnormal. In addition, people aged over 65 years old who have never had cervical screening, or who have not had a screening since they turned 50 years old, are able to request a cervical screening test through their general practice.