Revealed: The committee responsible for deciding NOT to roll out prostate cancer screening

By TOM KELLY, INVESTIGATIONS EDITOR Published: 01:00, 2 July 2026 | Updated: 01:01, 2 July 2026 It was undoubtedly a brave statement made by the chairman of Britain's National Screening Committee on live national radio last November. 'I haven't previously said this publicly, I have actually had prostate cancer myself, so I do know what it's about,' consultant oncologist Professor Sir Mike Richards revealed on the BBC's Today Programme. After experiencing symptoms, he said, he took a PSA blood test which is used to check for a potential marker of the disease, 'and from that I was diagnosed'. 'To complete the story, I had my prostate removed,' he added. With his diagnosis, Sir Mike – the former government cancer tsar – had, sadly, joined a far-from-exclusive club. Prostate is the most common cancer in the UK, with 63,000 cases and 12,000 deaths each year. Others victims include former England footballer John Barnes and ex-prime minister David Cameron. Six-times Olympic cycling champion Chris Hoy was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer in September 2023 and received the news that it had spread to his bones and become terminal in October 2024. And last month, Jeremy Clarkson revealed that he, too, has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of the disease. But while Sir Mike rightly won praise for being so open about his diagnoses and treatment, the rest of the interview was a bitter disappointment to prostate cancer campaigners. The senior physician was defending a decision by the UK National Screening Committee (UKNSC) to reject a major screening programme for the disease – effectively denying many other sufferers the treatment he received.  Committee chairman Professor SIr Mike Richards  UKNSC director of programmes Professor Anne Mackie  Under the committee's final recommendation, released in May, only men aged 45 to 61 who have a rare gene mutation, combined with a family history of breast, ovarian, pancreatic, or prostate cancer should qualify – which means as few as 1,500 will be invited for screening. Campaigners who had called for a far wider programme – initially targeted at high-risk men, such as those who are black, have a family history of the disease or specific genetic mutations – said the decision was a 'profound disappointment' and 'a real step back', warning that men risk being 'condemned to an avoidable death'. But it's hardly surprising that the committee came to its conclusion when you look at the views of those who sit on it – and the bizarre gaps in the experience of its membership. It raises deeply troubling questions about the body chosen to make such a crucial decision which, for many men, will mean the difference between life or death. The UKNSC is an independent organisation overseen by the Department of Health and Social Care which makes recommendations to ministers and the NHS on health screening, including whether to start, stop or change programmes.  Astonishingly, the 13-strong committee making one of the most important prostate cancer decisions in British history contains no urologists, the specialists who diagnose and treat prostate cancer. Many specialist urologists are, understandably, deeply critical of the committee's make-up. Chris Booth, a retired consultant urologist and founder of men's health charity Chaps, said it was a key issue in what he called its 'incomprehensible' and 'laughable' decision not to expand screening, which he warned 'will cost lives'. The lack of real-world expertise meant the committee's position rests on 'discredited, deeply flawed' research. Clarkson, 66, announced he had been diagnosed with 'aggressive' prostate cancer, which had been discovered early, in the most recent episodes of his show Clarkson's Farm Jeremy Clarkson's prostate cancer diagnosis has prompted thousands of men to check their own risk of contracting the disease PSA testing was a 'cheap and effective' guide to identify men who may need further investigation, which could be combined with modern MRI scans which can give a 'definitive' diagnostic test, Mr Booth said. The UKNSC, which meets three times a year and is accountable to the four UK chief medical officers, follows a number of key principles before recommending screening – or not. These include a reliable test and effective treatment, alongside evidence that screening provides 'more benefit than harm at a reasonable cost.' It is meeting the requirement of 'more benefit than harm' which appears to be behind the UKNSC's decision to reject a major prostate cancer screening programme. The committee has claimed that PSA blood tests can be unreliable and that many prostate cancers progress too slowly to cause problems or early death. Treating these can put men at unnecessary risk of impotence and incontinence, with screening doing more harm than good, it said. The principle of 'more harm than good' is repeated so often by the UKNSC that it almost feels like a religious mantra. A recent blog on its website hammered home this position. It said: 'Screening is one of the most powerful, but also potentially harmful, interventions in public health. 'It involves offering tests to large numbers of people who feel well – most of whom will never develop the condition being screened for. 'Because screening affects entire populations, the standards of evidence needed to justify it are higher than for many other healthcare interventions.' It added: 'Screening must be shown to do more good than harm overall, not just for individuals who may benefit from earlier diagnosis.' Prostate cancer is now the most common cancer in the UK, according to Prostate Cancer UK The blog was written by Katy Town, who works under Anne Mackie, the UKNSC director of programmes who provides specialist and administrative support to the committee ultimately making the recommendations. Professor Mackie – who has held the position since April 2013 – often appears to be something of an evangelist about the potential risks of screening programmes. In an interview with the Times in April 2015, she appeared to signal a significant shift from the usual NHS position that early checks were almost always a good idea. She warned that – while they were beneficial overall – some of those coming in for screening for breast, bowel and cervical cancer would be harmed by screening. 'Helping people to understand that finding stuff [such as cancer] isn't always a good thing is incredibly helpful,' she said. 'I'm a very keen advocate that when the individual is offered something by the NHS or by the private sector, they go, 'Hmm, I wonder if I really want that'.' Professor Mackie returned to this theme a few months later with a blog on the committee's website headlined: 'Why saying no to screening can be a good thing.' 'Implementing a screening programme which isn't supported by the evidence would waste public money that would be better spent in other ways,' she wrote. 'It could also hurt significant numbers of people by providing unnecessary anxiety, false reassurance or encouraging them to get treatments they don't need. Sometimes these treatments can have unpleasant or dangerous side effects.' In yet another blog post from 2019, headlined 'Don't let good intentions undermine population screening principles', she stressed that 'screening must be based on high-quality evidence of its overall benefit to the population', not the 'anecdotal opinions of individual clinicians, managers and policy makers.' And in a 2024 speech, she said 'all screening does some form of harm' and that 'early detection is not always a good thing… sometimes it's best to wait', otherwise 'we run the risk of overwhelming the system with people who are not unwell'. It's a view faithfully echoed by many others on the committee. In previous NHS reviews, chairman Sir Mike proclaimed that 'England can and should take pride' in its screening programmes which save an estimated '10,000 lives a year'.  But when it came to prostate screening, he disappointed campaigners when he said the committee was 'confident' that a very narrow criteria for screening was appropriate. Another committee member, clinical genetics consultant Anneke Lucassen, described in 2024 how the 'media and government headlines can be dominated by enthusiastic but not always achievable messages'.  She added: 'What I think the UKNSC does brilliantly is remain focused on its core principle that screening should do more good than harm. That's really important.' Fellow committee member Chris Hyde, a former hospital doctor and now Exeter University professor of public health, has said that 'prudence, not popularity' is the key to UKNSC's work. He said in 2024: 'People want easy answers …so they may think we're too negative. But I think history is on our side.' And another member, Bethany Shinkins, a medical statistician and professor at Warwick University, has said that the committee has to ensure that the 'benefits of screening massively outweigh the harms', because they are usually testing those who 'feel healthy' and they don't 'want to disrupt people's lives unnecessarily'. But outside the committee, there are many experts who take a strikingly different view about prostate cancer screening – in interventions that raise some difficult questions about the make-up of the decision-making body. Committee members apply for roles via the civil service jobs website, with appointments approved by the Department of Health and Social Care, but the position is voluntary and has no financial benefit. Selection criteria include 'expertise and ability to provide independent advice' and the UKNSC website says committee membership 'normally includes individuals from public life, academia and practising clinicians who have expertise in one or more relevant areas'. Health authorities on the continent have understood the benefits of mass screenings. The EU has pushed ahead with widened screening, under the guidance of the European Association of Urology, a 'body of genuine expert urologists'.  As Mr Booth points out: 'We lose more than 12,000 men a year to prostate cancer – worse than most of our Western neighbours – because we only catch half of cases at a curable stage.' He added: 'We don't need more trials. We need implementation of best clinical practice – and we need it now. Men are dying while the UKNSC looks the other way.' For its part, the British Association of Urological Surgeons said the committee's final recommendations would be 'disappointing for many men affected by prostate cancer, their families, and communities who continue to experience a disproportionate burden of disease'. It recognised that 'targeted screening for higher-risk groups represents a pragmatic and evidence-based approach', but said the final recommendation applies to a 'relatively small proportion of men at increased risk' who there would be 'significant practical challenges' in identifying. David James, of the charity Prostate Cancer Research, accused the committee of being 'static and backwards-looking', claiming that much of the evidence used to reject screening for higher-risk men came from an era before modern MRI, improved biopsy techniques, active surveillance and newer risk-based tests, all of which have profoundly changed how prostate cancer is found and managed. 'The UKNSC must adapt and modernise its approach, because to do anything else would risk failing the very people it was set up to protect,' he said. Martin Davies, chairman of the Prostate Project charity, agreed, saying the committee's concerns about over-diagnosis, over-treatment and harm were based on 'out-of-date information'. 'The days when a positive PSA test led automatically to aggressive interventions was 'a thing of the past', he added. 'They're not immediately shipped off somewhere to have a brutal biopsy. That's just not how it happens in real life now.' Professor Frank Chinegwundoh, consultant urologist at Barts Health in London, said men should have the chance to decide for themselves whether they wish to be screened or not and 'whether the small risk of potential harm outweighs the benefits'. His comments also highlighted another striking absence from the committee, when he said he was 'deeply disappointed … particularly in relation to black men who have double the risk of getting prostate cancer'. Together with fellow leading urologist Professor Stephen Langley, he said the committee's 'grave' mistake to treat black men and those with a family history of the disease the same as the low-risk population 'is not evidence-based prudence' but 'clinical negligence'. Strikingly, not a single member of the committee making such a vital decision for black men is black. Oscar-winning director Sir Steve McQueen, whose father died of prostate cancer, branded the committee 'indefensible' for not extending screening to black men. He said it was 'hard to understand' the lack of diversity on the committee and suggested they may have made a different choice had there been 'someone in the room who understood, from personal experience, what this disease does to black families'. The committee insists that widespread prostate cancer screening is not ruled out forever and as more evidence or developments emerge, its position may change. But given its ultra-cautious track record and public pronouncements, campaigners are understandably concerned that this could be a very long wait. The UKNSC first rejected lung cancer screening in 2007. By 2014, cancer expert Professor John Field of Liverpool University was urging for the immediate introduction of screening in the UK, warning every year of delay 'could needlessly sacrifice tens of thousands' of lives. He cited US data suggesting screening led to a fifth fewer deaths. Predictably, Professor Mackie responded that lung cancer screening would be recommended only 'if the benefits clearly outweigh the harms'. It wasn't until 2022 that the UKNSC finally recommended targeted lung cancer screening programme, almost a decade after it had been approved in America. Prostate cancer campaigners – and most men over 50 and their families – will be desperately hoping the committee moves far faster to change its mind this time. No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. We’ll ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. You can choose on each post whether you would like it to be posted to Facebook. 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