Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to extend bowel cancer screening to people aged 50 and over.

In the NHS Long Term Plan, the Government committed to modernising the NHS Bowel Cancer Screening Programme to detect and treat more cancers earlier by lowering the starting age for bowel screening from 60 to 50, following the UK National Screening Committee’s recommendation in August 2018.

NHS England and NHS Improvement and Public Health England agree that a phased approach is required to safely introduce this change, allowing capacity and resources (financial, facilities and accredited workforce) to be built into the system. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, NHS England and NHS Improvement are currently undertaking detailed modelling to assess endoscopy capacity and demand within the Bowel Cancer Screening Programme, which will inform decisions about the timing and implementation of the age extension.