Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to help tackle inequalities in bowel cancer screening participation.

While uptake of bowel cancer screening has increased, some groups struggle with barriers to engagement, leaving them at risk. We are providing £200m funding for Cancer Alliances, to reduce inequalities in communities among groups where screening uptake is lower.

To further increase coverage, NHS England:

• is delivering new approaches to communicating with people about screening through the NHS App;

• is incorporating the reasonable adjustment flag into screening to ensure people get information in the way they want and adjustments are made to support people at appointments;

• has recently updated the bowel cancer screening leaflets and are updating the bowel cancer screening letters to improve accessibility;

• and has made the bowel cancer screening FIT kit more accessible for people who are blind or partially sighted.

We are also increasing the sensitivity of the screening test from 120ug/g to 80ug/g. By 2028 this will annually detect over 600 more cancers and prevent 2000 cancers by identifying and removing pre-cancerous polyps.