Dr. Colm Henry:

With regard to the laboratory report, when one looks at laboratories one sees a whole range of quality assurance measures. As we know from the laboratory report provided here, the number of false negatives is very small in the context of the overall workload of the laboratory. It is therefore very difficult to draw conclusions. There are other measures which are equally, if not more, important such as the number of false positives. These can cause much distress and unnecessary interventions and, in some cases, invasive surgery. Another measure is the number of high-grade findings. Because of the huge numbers in each laboratory, it is difficult to draw definitive conclusions from the report.

One other point worth making is on the timeline of the cervical cancer screening programme which started in 2008. One would have expected a higher degree of findings at the beginning of the programme because no screening programme had existed beforehand. There are a number of confounders when one tries to examine the relative performance of false negatives in each laboratory, for example, the timing of the laboratory for the programme and the demographics, that is, the population that that laboratory will serve.

On interval cancer, I acknowledge that Deputy Kelly showed an interest in this matter in previous hearings. There cannot be any gap in this regard and we recognise the position of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists on an interval cancer audit. It is worth reminding people that the core purpose of interval cancer audit, in fact any audit, is learning and improvement. Interval cancer audit tied to the duty of candour, as prevails in England and Wales, mean that the results of false negatives would be communicated to everyone.