Cervical Cancer: Screening
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help increase the uptake of at-home cervical screening tests.
Answered by Ashley Dalton
From January 2026, screening providers in the NHS Cervical Screening Programme in England will be able to offer self-sampling kits to women if they have not attended their appointment for six months or more following routine invitation.
Self-sampling will help detect high-risk human papillomavirus, prevent cancer, and save lives in those who currently do not access clinician led screening. However, for those attending clinician testing, a shift to self-sampling might result in a programme that is not yet proven to be of equal efficacy. Further studies to consider whether self-sampling could be used across the whole population are being developed.
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