Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made an assessment of the potential impact of the reduction in the qualifying age for bowel cancer screening on detection rates in the past five years.

The final roll out of this policy only concluded in April 2025. As such, NHS England has not yet made any formal assessment of the impact of lowering the age for bowel cancer screening down to 50 on detection rates.

However, when making the recommendation to extend the screening age, from 60- to 74- year olds to 50- to 74- year olds, and to replace the faecal occult blood test with the faecal immunochemical test at the current test sensitivity threshold of 120 micrograms of haemoglobin per gram of faeces, these two activities combined were estimated to nearly double the number of colorectal cancer incidences detected and mortality reduced.