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 help increase the uptake of at-home cervical screening tests.

From January 2026, screening providers in the NHS Cervical Screening Programme in England will be able to offer self-sampling kits to women if they have not attended their appointment for six months or more following routine invitation.

Self-sampling will help detect high-risk human papillomavirus, prevent cancer, and save lives in those who currently do not access clinician led screening. However, for those attending clinician testing, a shift to self-sampling might result in a programme that is not yet proven to be of equal efficacy. Further studies to consider whether self-sampling could be used across the whole population are being developed.