Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to improve public awareness of the link between HPV and the development of cervical cancer.

The NHS Cervical Screening Programme in England offers screening to women aged 50 to 64 every five years to help detect and treat any cervical abnormalities at an early stage.

Public Health England continues to work with NHS England to develop a system of performance improvement through the use of performance floors, and strengthened governance for screening. The aims of the performance floors are:

- Improving performance and equity of service over time by reducing the range of variation at a local level including improving access to cervical screening for women aged 50 and over; and

- Enabling easy identification of poor performance and the setting of objectives and plans for local action, to reduce variation and improve performance.

In April 2012 the UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC) gave its support for a pilot to assess the value of using human papilloma virus (HPV) testing as primary screening for cervical disease, rather than the currently used cytology test. The pilot is establishing the feasibility of using HPV as the primary screen for cervical disease in order to achieve better outcomes for women, while minimising over-treatment and anxiety, and whether it is practical to roll out nationally. The UK NSC will open a public consultation shortly on whether HPV as primary screening for cervical disease should replace the currently used cytology test.

Information for women of all ages on cervical cancer and HPV is freely available on the NHS Choices website at:

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/cancer-of-the-cervix/pages/introduction.aspx