Dr. Lorraine Doherty:

As I have outlined in one of my previous answers there are several steps we have to go through before we can move to HPV primary screening. We have taken evidence from several countries about how they have led the development of their programme. While we have not visited Australia we have been in contact with colleagues there and have done a detailed review of some of the National Health Service, NHS, programmes, in particular the Scottish one.

A variety of approaches have been adopted to taking this forward. In some regions in Australia and New Zealand they stopped or suspended programmes for a while to allow for the introduction of the new programme. The laboratory issues are fundamentally important to having a recognised service provider and plugging it into our existing call and recall systems and how we generate results. All of that takes time.

The planning and implementation phases take quite a bit of time to put together to ensure they are done in a safe and evidence-driven way to achieve a quality service at the end of that process. It is not a thing to be rushed in a couple of months. Getting a laboratory provider to contract with us is unlikely before later this year. We cannot give a definitive timescale for when this service will be introduced but the Deputy must recognise that we have a very robust work programme going on to move us towards that point.