Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to increase public participation in the bowel cancer screening programme in Harpenden and Berkhamsted constituency.

Bowel screening uptake in Berkhamsted and Harpenden is currently between 84% and 87%. The NHS Central East Integrated Care Board (ICB) works closely with general practices (GPs) to encourage promotion of bowel screening through a ‘making every contact count’ approach when they are informed which of their patients have not returned their faecal immunochemical test (FIT).

The ICB has also used regional innovation screening funding to support cancer screening projects in Hertfordshire, including some specifically for bowel cancer. In 2025/26, the programme included:

• delivering outreach to people on the Serious Mental Illness Register who face barriers to screening because of their mental ill health;
• targeting non-responders from communities who find National Health Services hard-to-reach, including traveller and asylum seeker communities;
• supporting screening uptake within the learning disability population, with a particular focus on bowel screening;
• providing public education on cancer awareness to specific postcodes with low uptake of screening, delivered by the patient-led ‘Cancel out Cancer’ group;
• reviewing 130,000 bowel screening non-responders to identify themes in order to understand potential barriers; and
• reaching out to patients who are eligible for screening but who haven’t taken up the opportunity to answer any questions they have and book in appointments for people as needed, via Cancer Care Co-ordinators who form part of the GP teams across Hertfordshire.

In England, coverage of bowel cancer screening has been increasing in recent years. In 2019, 60.5% of people took the offer up, while now it is 71.8%. To further increase coverage across England, NHS England is doing the following:

• delivering new approaches to communicating with people about screening through the NHS App;
• incorporating the reasonable adjustment flag into screening to ensure that people get information in the way they want, and that adjustments are made to support people at appointments;
• has recently updated the bowel cancer screening leaflets and is updating the bowel cancer screening letters to improve accessibility; and
• has made the bowel cancer screening FIT kit more accessible for people who are blind or partially sighted.