Prostate cancer screening would save thousands of lives and have a ‘generational impact’ on men’s health, Rishi Sunak says

Prostate cancer screening would save thousands of lives a year and have a ‘generational impact’ on men’s health, Rishi Sunak said today.

The former Conservative prime minister stood alongside Labour’s deputy prime minister David Lammy as they called for targeted checks for men at highest risk of the disease.

The cross-party show of support came at the parliamentary launch of a report showing such a programme would cost the NHS just £18 per patient.

The UK National Screening Committee, which advises the government on which screening programmes to offer, is currently considering recent developments around prostate cancer diagnosis and is due to report its findings later this year.

Mr Sunak told the audience, which included MPs and celebrities such as comedian Michael McIntyre, chef Nigella Lawson and film director Steve McQueen: ‘We have the evidence, we have the technology, we have the public buy in. What we need now is the will.

‘It’s time to move from reactive care to proactive prevention. And if we can do this, we can save lives, we can reduce inequality, and we can ease pressures on the NHS.

‘And I say to my fellow MPs that are here today, we all came here to this place to improve our constituents lives.

‘This is our chance to make a generational impact on men’s health, deliver the preventative care that we talk about, that our country needs, and give thousands and thousands of families more precious years together. So let’s take it now.’

Mr Sunak said the screening would ‘not only save lives, but money, too’ as early treatment is much more effective and costs ten-times less than treating it late.

He added: ‘In the privacy of this room, I think we can admit that men are not very good at going to see the doctor.

‘Now, I’m the son of a GP and a pharmacist, and I still put it off as much as possible.

‘That instinct, though, is costing children their dads, costing friends precious time together and costing lives.

‘Prostate cancer is symptomless in the early stages, so we have got to find a way to nudge people to get checked.’

The new Prostate Cancer Research report says it would cost £25million a year to offer prostate cancer screening to 1.3million high risk men in the UK, meaning those aged 45 to 69 who are black or have a family history of the disease.

This is equal to just £18 each, which is £4 less than it costs to run the breast cancer screening programme already offered to women.

A targeted prostate screening programme would gift men an additional 1,254 years of life annually and require just five more MRI scanners and 75 extra staff, the report adds.

Mr Lammy described the campaign as ‘personal’ as he has two older brothers living with prostate cancer and both his parents died young with cancer.

He described the report as ‘an important contribution to the national conversation, which we’ve got to take seriously’ and joked he is trying to get on to the screening committee.

He added: ‘The government has been clear it would like to see screening in place, but we’ve also been clear that it must be evidence-led, and that’s why the independent UK National Screening Committee is reviewing this as a priority.’

He said the government’s Men’s Health Strategy and National Cancer Plan also present ‘really important opportunities to give prostate cancer the attention it deserves’.

Oliver Kemp, chief executive of Prostate Cancer Research, said: ‘We hope the UK National Screening Committee will take notice of the significant findings in this report.

‘It shows that a national screening programme for prostate cancer — targeting men at highest risk — is affordable, deliverable, and will save lives.’

The Daily Mail is campaigning to end needless prostate cancer deaths and for a national prostate cancer screening programme, initially targeted at high risk men.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men, with around 63,000 diagnoses and 12,000 deaths each year in the UK.

Nine in ten men diagnosed with prostate cancer in its early stages are still alive ten years later but this falls to fewer than one in five if caught late, once it has spread around the body.

Health secretary Wes Streeting has also declared his support for a national prostate cancer screening programme in a major boost for the Mail’s campaign.

The health secretary told MPs in April that he would like to see the NHS proactively offer men tests for the disease in a move that could prevent thousands of needless deaths.

He said he is ‘particularly sympathetic’ to the argument that this should initially be targeted at high-risk men.

The NHS already offers national screening programmes for breast, bowel and cervical cancers.