Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps she has taken to improve the rate of uptake in cervical screening.

In February and March 2022, the ‘Help Us Help You – Cervical Screening Saves Lives’ campaign urged individuals not to ignore a cervical screening invitation and to contact their general practitioner if they missed their last invitation. In some Primary Care Networks, appointments can also be made in any primary care setting, including integrated sexual health clinics and at evenings and weekends. To support further improvements in uptake, an evaluation of the effectiveness of human papillomavirus self-sampling is being made, where individuals take their own cervical screening sample.