Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to promote smear tests for young women; and what estimate he has made of the number of young women who died of cancer in the last five years who had not had a smear test.

The coverage of cervical screening amongst women between the ages of 25- 29 currently sees 60% of women in this age group accepting their invitation. The NHS Cervical Screening Programme is working in collaboration with the study STRATEGIC (Strategies to increase cervical screening uptake at first invitation) to identify interventions to increase uptake in this age group in Greater Manchester and Aberdeenshire. The trial looks to test five approaches to help women engage in the NHS Cervical Screening Programme. These interventions include pre-leaflets, online booking appointments, self-sampling screening kits to do at home to test for Human papillomavirus (HPV), nurse navigator to allow women to discuss screening with an experienced nurse and timed appointments, which are pre-booked for the women. The trial is due to complete in 2015 and the programme hopes is expected to report findings in 2016.

Information about the number of young women who died of cancer who had not had a smear test is not held centrally. However, the Cervical Screening Audit was published in May 2012 which is available at:

http://www.cancerscreening.nhs.uk/cervical/publications/nhscsp-audit-invasive-cervical-cancer.html

The purpose of the NHS Cervical Screening Programme Audit was to monitor the effectiveness of the cervical screening programme, identify areas of good practice, highlight where improvements could be made, and to monitor cases where the programme failed to prevent cervical cancer.