Ms Lorraine Walsh:

I can give an example about one woman who contacted me. When she got her review back, it had only reviewed the slide that she was actually diagnosed from. It said that the other slide was unavailable. By virtue of this, they had found that she could not have been diagnosed at an earlier stage and there was no missed opportunity. That would have classified her as concordant. The actual opening paragraph in the letter stated that the process of RCOG was to look back at cytology prior to diagnosis. In my opinion, that should have eliminated her from it if the slide prior to diagnosis was unavailable. It does not take a rocket scientist to know that the slide she was diagnosed from was read correctly because obviously she was diagnosed.

When we look at the 70:30 rates, we are told the screening programme is working within the norms that are expected of a 30% rate of discordance. Clearly, we cannot work off those figures. One has to look at the fact that just over half the women involved in this actually consented to the process. One is only looking at half of those screened in the system, basically half of the overall picture.