To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will give an estimate of the cost of cervical cancer screening in the north-west in 1988, and if he will make a statement.

Cervical cancer screening is often carried out in conjunction with other health care services for women. It is not therefore possible to identify separately the precise cost of the screening programme in individual regions. We do however know that in 1986, the latest year for which figures are available, about 400,000 smears were taken within the North Western RHA. The estimated national average cost of about £10 for taking arid examining individual smears would point to expenditure in the region of the order of £4 million for that year.

To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services what his Department is doing to assist Leicestershire district health authority in dealing with the delays in processing cervical cancer screening tests.

The DHSS circular on cervical cancer screening, a copy of which is in the Library, states that laboratories must aim to send the results of a smear to the doctor who submitted it within a maximum of one month of receiving it. It is for the district health authorities to take action to achieve this. This Department monitors the position and we are aware that Leicestershire district health authority has recruited additional staff and that screeners are working overtime. The processing time has been reduced from eight weeks at 1 April to four weeks at 23 May.

To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will make a further statement on the progress of the cervical cancer screening programme.

To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will make a further statement on the progress of the cervical cancer screening programme.

I refer my hon. Friends to my reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Wanstead and Woodford (Mr. Arbuthnot) earlier today.