An error that led to hundreds of thousands of women missing out on breast screening invitations could date back further than previously thought and have affected an additional 140,000 people, a cancer expert has said.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt revealed earlier this month that 450,000 women aged 68 to 71 had not been invited to their final routine screening due to a computer error dating back to 2009.

But Professor Peter Sasieni, a cancer screening and prevention researcher at King's College London, believes the problems could have started as early as 2005. Public Health England (PHE) said his analysis is "flawed".

Prof Sasieni studied data from the breast cancer screening programme between 2004 and 2017, looking at the number of eligible women who were sent invitations each year from the ages of 45 to 70.

In a letter published in medical journal The Lancet, Prof Sasieni said that between 2004 and 2005 - when the programme was extended to the age of 70 - the number of invitations sent to women aged 65 to 70 was "very low".