Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will make it his policy to make routine bowel cancer screening available to people between the ages of 50 and 60.

The risk of bowel cancer increases with age, with over 80% of bowel cancers being diagnosed in people who are aged 60 or over. Based on this evidence and, in order to support our policy that screening programmes do more good than harm, the NHS Bowel Cancer Screening Programme offers bowel cancer screening every two years to men and women aged 60 to 74. The NHS Bowel Cancer Screening Programme uses the faecal occult blood (FOB) test, a self-sampling kit.

In addition to FOB testing, the NHS Bowel Cancer Screening Programme is currently rolling out Bowel Scope Screening (BSS) - a one off examination which will play a significant role in preventing bowel cancer. Both men and women will be invited for BSS around the time of their 55th birthday. If people are not screened at 55, they can request BSS up to the age of 59. BSS finds and removes any small bowel growths (polyps) that could eventually turn into cancer.

In November 2015 the UK National Screening Committee, which advises Ministers and the National Health Service in all four countries about all aspects of screening policy, recommended that the Faecal Immunochemical Test (FIT) should replace the currently used FOB test in the NHS Bowel Cancer Screening Programme. The FIT self-sampling kit will be offered to men and women aged 60 to 74 every two years. It is expected to increase screening uptake by around 10% and result in around 200,000 more people a year being tested, potentially saving hundreds of lives. FIT will be implemented from April 2018.

We believe the biggest impact we can have on saving lives from bowel cancer in England is implementing FIT in 2018 and the current roll-out of BSS to all men and women aged 55. Anyone over the age of 74 can self-refer themselves into the screening programme every two years.