Cancer Screening (Hansard, 22 March 1994)

§ 10. Mr. Bates
To ask the Secretary of State for Health what proportion of general practitioners are achieving either the higher or lower targets for cancer screening in the northern region; and if she will make a statement.

§ Mr. Sackville
Ninety-nine per cent. of general practitioners in the northern region have achieved one of the targets for cervical screening. That is an excellent record.

§ Mr. Bates
Is not that answer somewhat at odds with the statement made by the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) when the targets were set that the immunisation and screening targets were so heroic that many doctors would give up even trying? Does not the excellent news about northern region GPs demonstrate that the hon. Gentleman was not criticising the policy, but was severely underestimating the professionalism and abilities of northern region GPs?

§ Mr. Sackville
I agree with my hon. Friend. Given what has happened since, it is particularly shocking that the Labour spokesman should in effect have exhorted GPs to give up, to screen fewer women and to save fewer lives. That typifies the thoroughly negative attitude that the Labour party maintains towards the NHS.

§ Mr. McCartney
A rising issue is that of prostate cancer and the Government's failure to provide for screening. Some 41,000 men have died in the past five years from that silent killer; yet the Government refuse to recognise that level of death by introducing a national screening system. If there is a national screening system for cervical cancer—which the Opposition support—for 2,500 deaths per year for women, there should be a national screening system for prostate cancer, from which 10,000 men a year die. When will the Secretary of State act and introduce such a national screening system?

§ Mr. Sackville
As the hon. Gentleman knows, before we introduced a national scheme for cervical and breast cancer, we had to make sure that we had an efficient and effective method of screening which would not lead to a lot of false diagnoses or to false and unnecessary surgery.
In the case of colorectal, ovarian and prostatic cancer, it may be that in time we shall find a consensus and the possibility of bringing in effective national screening systems. When that happens, we shall undoubtedly save more lives, but it cannot be brought in overnight.