Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to make an assessment of the potential merits of aligning the NHS England bowel cancer referral cut-off point for hidden blood levels in stool samples with the cut-off point in Scotland; and if he will make a statement.

NHS England has committed, in the NHS Long Term Plan, to modernise bowel cancer screening by lowering the starting age from 60 to 50 and increasing the sensitivity of the faecal immunochemical test. NHS England is currently in the process of planning for delivery of the Long Term Plan commitment to modernise the Bowel Cancer Screening Programmes.