Prostate Cancer

Lord Patten Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patten (Con)]

My Lords, first, the key word in my noble friend’s very important question is “proactively”. Axiomatically, it is Ministers who must decide to be proactive in the end, not national screening committees. This is a time when worried men face a blizzard of news and views about their prostate risk. These are sometimes very hard to decide on; they are conflicting or indeed confusing, even within some GP practices on the front line. PSA tests are valuable, but they have some limitations, not producing infallible results every time. We must be honest about the upsides and downsides, and they must be made clear in order to get realistic buy-in from men on the need to get started on being checked from age 45, or indeed even earlier.

Secondly, surely the messages should be the same in all four parts of the United Kingdom. They are not at the moment: they are different, which strikes me as bizarre, despite the fact that men do and can freely move across borders, just as the condition moves across borders. So I say to the Minister only that in the end it is national Ministers in the four different regions who must be got together to give one national message, lest the tragic death toll climbs further and faster.