Women’s lives may have been cut short by a major IT error which meant 450,000 patients in England missed crucial breast cancer screenings, the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has said.



As many as 270 women may have died because of the 2009 computer error, he said.



Families now face the distressing possibility that loved ones who have recently died from breast cancer may have missed opportunities for early diagnosis. Women receiving breast cancer treatment, including those with a terminal diagnosis, may also receive letters informing them of missed screenings in the coming months.



The government has ordered an independent inquiry into the scandal, which Public Health England (PHE) only unearthed in January after almost a decade of errors, Hunt said.

The computer glitch that led to the breast screening disaster Read more

He said between 135 and 270 women “may have had their lives shortened as a result” of the missed letters, which were due to be sent out automatically to older women registered with their GPs.



He said the numbers may be considerably lower, but that statistical modelling suggested there were “likely to be some people in this group who would have been alive today if this had not happened”.



Hunt told the House of Commons that because of a computer algorithm failure an estimated 450,000 women aged between 68 and 71 were not invited to their final breast screening between 2009 and the start of 2018.



He said the error was a serious failure of the screening programme.

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He apologised “wholeheartedly and unreservedly for the suffering caused”, and said: “Tragically there are likely to be some people in this group who would have been alive today if this failure had not happened.”



Of the women who missed screenings, 309,000 were still alive and would be contacted before the end of May, and the first 65,000 notifications would be sent out this week, Hunt said.



The letters will tell women under 72 that they will automatically be sent an invitation for a catchup screening, and those 72 and over will be given access to a helpline to decide whether a screening is appropriate, he said.



Hunt said his department would contact the families of women who had died of breast cancer and who believed they had missed a screening, to apologise, and offer a process to establish whether the missed scan led to shortening of their life. “We recognise this will be incredibly distressing for some families,” he said.



Family members would have their concerns investigated and compensation may be payable if the error is found to have led to an earlier death, he said.



The regular screenings offered to women who are most at risk of developing the disease mean signs of early cancer development can be picked up before women notice the symptoms.



Many families will be “deeply disturbed by these revelations,” Hunt said, especially those recently diagnosed with breast cancer or those who were recently bereaved. “For them and others, it is incredibly upsetting to know that you did not receive an invitation to screening at a correct time and totally devastating to hear you may have lost or be about to lose a loved one because of administrative incompetence.”

The issue came to light because of an upgrade to the IT system for the breast screening invitation programme. Dr Jenny Harries, PHE’s deputy medical director, said the body was “very sorry for these faults in the system”.

She said: “We have carried out urgent work to identify the problem and have fixed it. Additional failsafe systems have been introduced to ensure the problem does not reoccur,.”

The problem was identified during a review of the progress of a major NHS trial designed to find out whether extra screening would protect older women from breast cancer.

Set up in 2009, the AgeX trial now runs in 65 breast cancer units across England. After it was noticed that women in the trial had not been invited for their final routine screenings before their 70th birthday, it emerged that this had also happened to women in the routine NHS breast screening programme, affecting an estimated 450,000 women, according to Public Health England.

The inquiry is likely to raise questions for Labour, under whom the IT errors occurred, as well as for the Conservatives as to why the glitch was not picked up sooner.

Hunt said the inquiry would establish how many people were affected, why the error occurred and how it could be prevented in future. It will also examine why it took nearly a decade to pick up the problem and whether ministers were informed early enough.



The inquiry will be chaired by Lynda Thomas, the chief executive of Macmillan cancer support and Prof Martin Gore, consultant medical oncologist at the Royal Marsden. It will review the entire breast screening programme and report back in six months.

Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, said Hunt must give assurances that checks were being carried out to make sure that no one was missing out on screenings for other cancers. “Eight years is a long time for an error of this magnitude to go undetected,” he said, adding that ministers must investigate whether early warning signs were missed.

Labour MP Lisa Nandy said she had concerns about whether overstretched NHS screening services would be able to meet the extra demand.

Hunt said new resources would be found where scans and treatment were needed “to make sure other people are not disadvantaged”.

It is unclear whether those resources would require extra funding. A government spokesman said it had delayed making the errors public in order to make sure resources were in place to cope with a spike in demand.

The Royal College of Radiologists said the catch-up test would place considerable strain on screening units already stretched. “Ultimately, we need funding for more training posts for radiologists to ensure the screening programme – and the NHS as a whole – has the vital imaging doctors it needs,” said Caroline Rubin, its vice-president.

Prof Helen Stokes-Lampard, the chair of the Royal College of GPs, also said she was shocked by the implications of the error, saying more than 18,000 cancers were detected as a result of the breast screening programme which might not have been detected as early otherwise.

Stokes-Lampard said it was vital there were “enough resources in the system to cope with any additional demand that might follow as a result; and steps taken to ensure this never happens again.”

Cancer charities expressed deep concern about the revelations. The chief executive of Breast Cancer Now, Delyth Morgan, said it was beyond belief that the error continued for almost a decade, calling it a “colossal systematic failure”. Cancer Research UK Emma Greenwood said they were “very concerning”.