Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of faecal immunochemical tests in diagnosing cancer in under-50s in England; and what assessment he has made of levels of adherence to NICE guidelines on the use of those tests.

No assessment has been made on the link between iron anaemia and colorectal cancer for national screening purposes. Colorectal cancer is more common in people over the age of 50, but it can affect people of any age. To identify patients who have symptoms that do not align to a particular type of tumour, including for non-specific symptoms of colorectal cancer, the National Health Service has implemented ‘non-specific symptom pathways’. There are 103 pathways currently in place with the aim to have national coverage by March 2024.

To encourage people to see their general practitioner if they notice symptoms that could be cancer, NHS England runs the ‘Help Us, Help You’ campaigns, which address the barriers that deter patients from accessing the NHS.