Fund routine breast cancer screening from the age of 25
The Parliament petitions site records 18,655 signatures for this petition, which closed on 18 March 2024. The Government responded on 23 October 2023.
The petition
The petition's creator is not named in the Petitions site's published record. Quoted in full from the UK Parliament petitions site.
Fund routine breast cancer screening from the age of 25
Women under 50 should be able to access routine breast cancer screenings. Further tests can then be arranged as necessary, so that breast cancer is identified as early as possible, to maximise the chance of successful treatment and survival.
I am 33 and I have been diagnosed with grade 3 invasive triple negative breast cancer. The first I heard of early screening options was in the cancer clinic waiting room on my diagnosis. I believe this is utterly unacceptable.
Just because young women have denser breast tissue and are at a lower risk does NOT mean they should not be getting screened, to enable an early diagnosis, and better prognosis and chance of survival.
The Government's response
The Government published its response on 23 October 2023; the petitions site lists the Department of Health and Social Care as responsible. Its summary:
The Government is committed to reducing lives lost to breast cancer. Women between 50-71 years are invited to breast screening every three years, as recommended by the UK National Screening Committee.
The opening 398 words of the 716-word response:
DHSC recognises breast cancer can be a devastating disease affecting people of all ages. According to Cancer Research UK, between 2016-18 there were around 55,920 new cases of breast cancer each year in the UK and in England, 76% survived 10 or more years between 2016-18.
Owing to cutting edge treatments and faster detection breast cancer survival rates are improving, last year more than a million breast cancer scans were carried out saving an estimated 1,300 lives.
We have increased funding by £10 million to provide 28 new mobile breast screening units as well as over 60 life-saving upgrades to services in the areas where they were most needed.”
The NHS Breast Screening Programme offers all women in England between the ages of 50 and their 71st birthday the opportunity to be screened every three years for breast cancer, to help detect abnormalities and intervene early to reduce the number of lives lost to invasive breast cancer.
We currently do not screen women younger than the age of 50 due to the lower risk of women under this age developing breast cancer and the fact that women below 50 tend to have denser breasts; The denseness of breast tissue reduces the ability of getting an accurate mammogram, the accepted screening test for breast cancer.
The 2012 UK independent review of breast cancer screening (the Marmot review) found little evidence to show that regular mammograms for women below the current screening age would result in reduced deaths from breast cancer. The Marmot review also found that screening women outside the ages of 50-70 years could lead to over-diagnosis (referring women for unnecessary tests) and over-treatment (operating on women with disease which is unlikely to cause serious harm to them).
Not all breast cancers can be detected early when they are non-invasive, and some women with non-invasive disease would never develop cancer during their lifetime. Abnormalities that would never have developed into a cancer would be found and treated, potentially causing unnecessary harm and anxiety.
Breast screening is currently offered from age 50 because the chance of developing breast cancer increases with age: four out of five breast cancers develop in women over 50. The Marmot review estimated that inviting women aged 50-70 reduces mortality from breast cancer in the population invited by 20% and saves an estimated 1,300 lives a year. You can read the Marmot Review here: http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/prod_consump/groups/cr_common/@nre/@pol/documents/generalcontent/breast-screening-report.pdf
Read the full response on the petitions site.
Source and receipt
- https://petition.parliament.uk/archived/petitions.json?state=with_response&page=21UK Parliament Petitions API · read 2026-10-15 · SHA-256
c3182cd829f32a7e… - The petition on petition.parliament.uk
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