Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether future breast screening service specifications will include details and standards outlining the on-site support, equipment, and reasonable adjustments screening units must be able to provide to women with disabilities and support needs.

The NHS Breast Screening Programme takes equality of access and opportunity for breast screening seriously. There is guidance in place to support breast screening services to address specific needs that people may have in order to attend their breast screening. This guidance is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/breast-screening-identifying-and-reducing-inequalities

Breast screening services are already expected to meet these requirements as part of the current national specification.

A project is underway to assess how the Reasonable Adjustments Digital Flag can be best implemented across screening programmes and how provider services can be best enabled to respond to these requirements. The national screening service specification will be appropriately updated to reflect changes.