Mr. J. Enoch Powellasked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland whether he has considered the gross annual variations in recent years in the incidence of cervical cancer; and if he will promote investigations to ascertain the explanation.
§ Mr. John PattenI regret that my reply to the hon. Member for Eccles (Mr. Carter-Jones) on 27 April 1982 gave incomplete information for 1979 and 1980.—[Vol. 22, c.256–57.] This arose because until 1979 only one record was kept of cervical cancer cases which, unlike the Great Britain records, did not distinguish between malignant neoplasm and carcinoma in situ and details of the latter type were omitted from the table. It has now been decided to maintain records on a common basis throughout the United Kingdom. The corrected statistics are shown in the following table:
1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 15–24 6 1 4 6 12 25–34 14 14 27 44 36 35–44 15 14 17 29 29 45–54 21 16 22 17 23 55–64 25 25 24 19 21 65–74 18 13 15 19 8 75+ 8 12 12 10 7 Total 107 95 121 144 136 A number of factors affect the incidence of cases registered, and annual variations can be attributed to these. No special investigation is therefore considered necessary.