Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to his Written Statement of 16 September 2019, Official Report, HCWS11, what the timeframe is for NHSX to complete its delivery of new IT systems to support the breast screening programme.

NHSX, Public Health England, NHS Digital, NHS England and NHS Improvement have established a programme to modernise the IT systems on which the national screening programmes are delivered. The programme is applying the Government Digital Service’s ‘agile’ approach and has recently commenced a prototyping ('alpha') phase focussed on the “call and recall” of screening participants. The alpha will end in January 2020, at which point it will be clearer what is required and the likely timescales.