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 screening for prostate cancer.

Screening for prostate cancer is currently not recommended by the UK National Screening Committees (UK NSC). 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; for example, incontinence of faeces and urine and impotence.

The UK NSC is undertaking an evidence review for prostate cancer screening and plans to report within the UK NSC’s three-year work plan.

The evidence review includes modelling the clinical cost effectiveness of several approaches to prostate cancer screening; this includes different potential ways of screening the whole population from 40 years of age onwards and targeted screening aimed at groups of people identified as being at higher-than-average risk, such as black men or men with a family history of cancer.