Prostate Cancer

Baroness Murphy Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

My Lords, as a doctor, I have witnessed many men living with prostate cancer and cared for them. It has been heartening over the last 30 years to see the dramatic improvement in survival—good survival—of prostate cancer. My own husband was treated successfully for an aggressive prostate tumour 17 years ago, following an entirely fortuitous PSA test. But as we have heard and as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, has reminded us, PSA testing is not perfect; surely it will be superseded soon by something better. The 20% reduction in mortality through PSA screening has surely been won very well, but at a very high price in the side-effects of treatment by surgery and radiology, and in urinary incontinence and erectile dysfunction, which very few urological services in the UK take seriously enough to treat, even though they can be successfully treated.

Going back to the PSA test, there are now risk calculators to help GPs and patients assess whether the test is worth it. As has already been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Mott, male patients do not go to the GP unless they are forced to and they have symptoms. They do not like to go through the 8 o’clock scramble—how many of us do? We are light-years away, therefore, from the discussions that we need between patients and GPs, even though, theoretically, we have universal registration with GPs, which should be the perfect concept for developing the system. GPs will not do it unless there is money in it, and if we could include proper screening with risk calculators with GPs in the QOF points, we could solve the problem.