Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to improve prostate cancer (a) screening and (b) awareness in Colne Valley constituency.

Screening for prostate cancer is currently not recommended by the UK National Screening Committees. 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.

NHS England runs Help Us Help You campaigns to increase knowledge of cancer symptoms, address barriers to acting on them to encourage people to come forward as soon as possible to see their general practitioner. The campaigns focus on a range of symptoms as well as encouraging ‘body awareness’ to help people spot symptoms across a wide range of cancers at an earlier point.