Asked by: John Slinger (Labour - Rugby)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to raise awareness among men and boys about the mental health support available to them.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The 10-Year Health Plan sets out ambitious plans to transform mental health services to improve access and treatment, and to promote good mental health and wellbeing for men and boys. The Government is committed to working beyond the health system to create an environment that promotes good mental health, prevents people from developing mental health problems, and improves the lives of people living with a mental health problem.
We are developing a Men's Health Strategy which will seek to improve the health and wellbeing of all men in England, and which will be informed by a call for evidence. This includes finding the right ways to promote healthier behaviours, improving outcomes for health conditions that hit men harder, and improving engagement with healthcare. The call for evidence closed on 17 July 2025. The responses are informing the development of the strategy.
Asked by: John Slinger (Labour - Rugby)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps to introduce prostate cancer testing for men at earlier ages than is currently available.
Answered by Andrew Gwynne
Screening for prostate cancer is currently not recommended by the UK National Screening Committees (UK NSC). This is because of the inaccuracy of the current best test, called the Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA). A PSA-based screening programme could harm some men as many would be diagnosed with a cancer that would not have caused them problems during their life. This would lead to additional tests and treatments which can also have harmful side effects, such as sexual dysfunction and incontinence.
The UK NSC regularly reviews its recommendations, and the evidence review for prostate cancer screening is underway and plans to report within the UK NSC’s three-year work plan.
The evidence review includes modelling the clinical effectiveness and cost of several approaches to prostate cancer screening, including different potential ways of screening the whole population from 40 years of age onwards, and targeted screening aimed at groups of people identified as being at higher than average risk, such as black men or men with a family history of cancer.