Professor Henry Kitchener:

I do not believe that would have made a material difference. I do not think that those slides as a sample would be qualitatively different from the very large sample that we reviewed. In other words, the ratio of concordant and discordant findings would not have been any different. The Deputy suggested that given all of the cancers that have developed following involvement in the CervicalCheck programme, that is surely a sign that all is not well. I refer back to the fact that, as has been said on multiple occasions today, cervical screening will simply not prevent every case. Each and every one of these cases is of major consequence to the lives of women. In this cohort, a very large proportion of women were caught at a very early stage which, as Deputy O'Connell has indicated, means that women can avoid some of the more unpleasant consequences of, for example, radical treatment. Despite all of that, that does not mean that the programme is not working. Those two matters are not-----