Question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the National Audit Office report entitled Investigation into the management of Health Screening, published 1 February 2019, what steps his Department is taking to ensure NHS screening laboratories are sufficiently staffed.
Answer
The National Health Service Long Term Plan sets out specific workforce actions developed by NHS Improvement and others to have positive impact for workforces, including the screening and diagnostic workforce. NHS Improvement and the Department will discuss these actions when the education and training budget for Health Education England is set in 2019. This includes a proposal to recruit an additional 1,500 clinical and diagnostic staff across seven priority specialisms between 2018 and 2021.
With specific reference to the national cervical screening programme that includes NHS laboratories, the replacement of liquid based cytology with human papillomavirus (HPV) testing as the primary screen, has had a significant impact on the ability to maintain staff in the cervical screening programme’s laboratory workforce. The HPV pilot evaluation suggested that the need for a cytology workforce could reduce by as much as 85% when HPV testing is introduced as the primary screen during 2019.
NHS England is undertaking a national procurement process to secure providers of laboratory services to deliver HPV primary screening across England. The outcome of the process will be known by the end of April 2019, with national coverage in place by December 2019.
To maintain the service and accommodate current staffing levels a majority of existing HPV pilot sites and some non-pilot sites have already converted more of their cervical screening activity to HPV primary screening, freeing up cytology capacity.
In addition, Professor Sir Mike Richards is leading a major review of national cancer screening programme pathways as part of the NHS Long Term Plan’s renewed drive to improve care and save lives. Professor Richards’ review is due to report in summer 2019.