Health secretary Wes Streeting wants to see a national prostate cancer screening programme in place for men at high risk of the disease, MPs have been told.
However, in his evidence to the parliamentary health and social care committee this week, Mr Streeting stressed that any decisions on screening need to be ‘evidence-based and evidence-led’.
This comes under the remit of the National Screening Committee, which is currently looking into a screening programme following Mr Streeting’s own request to do so, he revealed.
He appeared in front of the committee to be questioned by MPs on the upcoming abolition of NHS England and its impact on the running of ICBs as well as frontline staff.
During the session, Conservative MP for Isle of Wight East Joe Robertson asked him whether he wants to see a national prostate cancer screening programme for men at high risk of the disease.
Mr Streeting said: ‘I would like to see that, but – and this is such an important “but” – decisions in this area do need to be evidence-based and evidence-led, and that’s why we have a National Screening Committee. So I’ve asked the National Screening Committee to look at this, and they are.’
He added: ‘I think there is an even more compelling case around groups that are at higher risk of prostate cancer.
‘But ultimately, and I think this is where as politicians we have such a responsibility to sometimes resist the temptation to sign every petition or to sign up to every campaign. We’ve got to make sure that decisions we make are evidence led and evidence based.’
On the abolition of NHS England, Mr Streeting told the committee that some ICBs have ‘asked for permission’ to merge and consolidate in the wake of announcements that they will have to make cuts of 50%.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is ‘very receptive’ to these requests for ICB mergers, Mr Streeting revealed.
Mr Streeting was also questioned on his plans to shift more care into the community, and particularly whether he will be ‘double running, funding both secondary and primary care’ or whether secondary care will be ‘expected to lose money for this’.
He said: ‘I think it’s a bit of both. I mean, we can’t afford, against the backdrop of the challenges that we have, the luxury of double running things all over the shop.’
He pointed to ICB areas where system leaders have concluded that ‘rather than pouring more money into another set of secondary care services’, it would be ‘better’ for the secondary care provider and their patient outcomes ‘for some of that money to go into primary care’.
‘I want to see more of that system leadership and system thinking,’ Mr Streeting added.
England’s chief medical officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty also appeared in front of the committee this morning, and stressed that day-to-day working lives of NHS staff will not change as a result of NHSE’s abolition.
He told MPs: ‘Every clinician on the front line, for almost all the technical people and for most of the policy people, their day job will not change from one day to the next as a result of these changes, because what they’re doing is they’re working for patients, they’re working for the public, and that’s what they should be doing. They shouldn’t be spending their time thinking about reorganisations.’
In February, it was reported that the National Screening Committee had been under increased pressure to reconsider its PSA testing policy as a result of Sir Chris Hoy’s announcement last year that he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer.
The screening committee had already been considering six different proposals for prostate cancer screening, including a targeted service for men at higher risk.
And last year, Mr Streeting said the Government will introduce a men’s health strategy to tackle prostate and testicular cancer, cardiovascular disease, and mental health.
A version of this story was first published on our sister title Pulse.
