Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of lowering the age at which women are offered their first smear test.

The cervical screening age in the United Kingdom was officially changed from 20 to 25 years old in 2003. This decision was made by the Advisory Committee on Cervical Cancer Screening which advised the NHS Cervical Screening Programme to raise the starting age due to evidence that screening younger women could do more harm than good. This is because: cervical abnormalities are common in women under 25 years old, but they usually resolve naturally; screening could lead to unnecessary treatments, which carry risks such as increased chances of pre-term delivery; and cervical cancer is extremely rare in women under 25 years old.

Since then, the human papillomavirus vaccination programme has been introduced, which means the vast majority of women under 29 years old have been offered the vaccine that protects against most forms of cervical cancer.