Advocacy Toolkit · Petition 751472

Write to your MP.

A ready-to-send letter urging a parliamentary debate on a national prostate cancer screening programme. Adapt it to your own story, then send.

Download the letter (Word)

Approx. 4 pages · ~1,400 words · British English

Why this letter, and why now

100,000

Signatures on Petition 751472. Parliament must now consider a debate on a national prostate cancer screening programme.

Consider. Not schedule. That is the next decision the Petitions Committee will make.

The Committee decides whether the debate happens. My concern is that the 2 June ministerial decision — the acceptance of the NSC recommendation, the £20m research package, the conditional TRANSFORM expansion — may look, from the outside, like the matter is closed.

It is not closed. The Cochrane Collaboration published its updated review on 15 May 2026 — 800,000 men, six trials, twenty-three years of follow-up — after the NSC deliberated and before the ministerial sign-off. The evidence moved. The decision did not.

What tips a Committee decision is constituent voices — individual letters from individual postcodes. One letter from you carries more weight than the petition can carry on its own. That is why this template exists.

How to use the letter

Three steps. Twenty minutes.

Find your MP Go to members.parliament.uk/FindYourMP and enter your postcode. Copy their full name and their House of Commons address.
Personalise the letter Download the Word file (or copy the text). Fill in every field in square brackets. Replace the personal story section with your own — guidance below.
Send it — then share it Email or post to their House of Commons address. Both formats count. Then send this page to one other person who should write too.

The section that matters most

Your story goes in the middle.

The evidence sections in the letter — the March recommendation, the Cochrane update, the bowel and breast cancer comparison, the economic case — can be sent as they are. What makes your letter land is the personal story section in the middle.

What to include You do not need to write a full account. Two to four short paragraphs is enough. What matters most:

When you were diagnosed, or when you lost the person you lost.
The age at diagnosis. Symptoms or lack of them. Any PSA number you know.
How the diagnosis was reached — did the person have to push for a test?
What has been lost, or what is at stake. Keep it factual. Specific facts move MPs; general emotion does not.

If you are writing as a family member: name the person, their age, and one detail that made them who they were. Then say plainly what earlier detection would have meant.

Preview the letter

Read it first, if you'd like.

The full letter runs to about four pages. This is what's inside.

Full letter text

[Your name]
[Your postal address]
[Postcode]
[Email]
[Telephone]

[Date]

[Your MP's Full Name] MP
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA

Dear [MP Name],

Petition 751472 — a national prostate cancer screening programme, and the parliamentary debate your constituents deserve

I am writing to you as your constituent about Petition 751472, which calls for a national prostate cancer screening programme. The petition has passed 100,000 signatures, which obliges the House to consider it for debate. I am writing to ask you to support that debate, to attend it, and — if you are willing — to meet with me beforehand.

The petition was created and run by the charity Prostate Cancer Research. I am writing in a personal capacity, as a constituent who has good reason to care about the outcome.

Why this matters to me

[Your personal story goes here — two to four short paragraphs. See guidance above.]

Who dies from this disease, and when

Prostate cancer is now the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the United Kingdom, with more than 64,000 men diagnosed every year and around 12,000 dying from it. That is one death every 45 minutes.

Prostate cancer is not simply an old man's disease. The mean age at diagnosis is falling. Men are being diagnosed in their forties and fifties, at the peak of their working lives, with families and dependents.

Why the March recommendation was flawed

In March 2026, the UK National Screening Committee recommended against population screening for prostate cancer. That recommendation was based on modelling the public has not been permitted to see, and rested on assumptions that no longer describe how prostate cancer is diagnosed in this country. A raised PSA today leads to an MRI first, not a biopsy. Low-risk disease goes to active surveillance. The overdiagnosis figure the modelling relies on assumes a pathway that clinical practice has already left behind.

How the evidence has moved since March

Two months after the recommendation, on 15 May 2026, the Cochrane Collaboration — the gold standard in systematic evidence review — published its updated review of prostate cancer screening. Six trials, 800,000 men, twenty-three years of follow-up. Its conclusion: PSA screening likely reduces mortality, with one to two deaths prevented per 1,000 men tested, and roughly 30% more cancers detected at earlier, more curable stages. The same body concluded in 2013 that the evidence for screening was insufficient. The evidence has now moved.

Waiting for TRANSFORM is not what we did for bowel or breast cancer

TRANSFORM asks which screening method is best. It does not ask whether we should screen. In 1988 we began screening women for breast cancer with the mammogram — not a perfect test then, not a perfect test now. We did not wait for perfection. We began, saved lives, and refined the tool in motion. The same happened with cervical cancer, and with bowel cancer. For prostate cancer, we have made the opposite choice. TRANSFORM is the research. A programme is the action. Funding the research is necessary. It is not a substitute for taking the action.

The cost of doing nothing

Take a conservative £50,000 in additional lifetime treatment cost attributable to late versus early diagnosis, across the approximately 30,000 men diagnosed late each year in England. That is £1.5 billion a year. At a plausible higher figure of £150,000 per patient it approaches £4.5 billion a year. These are direct treatment costs alone — before lost earnings, lost tax revenue, and the families left behind.

Prostate Cancer Research modelled a targeted screening programme in 2025 at around £25 million a year — roughly £18 per eligible man, in line with the breast and bowel programmes already running. Tens of millions weighed against billions. That is not a close call.

The ask

When the Petitions Committee brings the petition forward, I am asking you to do three things. First, support the debate. Second, attend it and put your position on the record. Third, if you are willing, meet with me — at your convenience, in person or by video call.

Thank you for reading, and for the work you do on behalf of the constituency.

Yours sincerely,

[Your name]

After you send

Two more things that count.

Sign the petition, if you haven't already Petition 751472 — hosted by the UK Parliament. Closes 13 July 2026 at 23:59.

Sign the petition

Send this page to one other person A friend with a diagnosis. A family that lost someone too soon. One share reaches the next letter-writer.

Follow Smart As Daddy for updates on the debate, the campaign, and what nobody tells you.

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Petition 751472 was created and is run by Prostate Cancer Research. Smart As Daddy champions it independently.
© 2026 Smart As Daddy / Peter Wingrove. All rights reserved.

[Your full name]
[Your postal address, line 1]
[Your postal address, line 2]
[Postcode]
[Email address]
[Telephone]

[Date]

[Your MP's Full Name] MP
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA

Dear [MP Name],

Petition 751472 — a national prostate cancer screening programme, and the parliamentary debate your constituents deserve

The petition was created and run by the charity Prostate Cancer Research. I am writing in a personal capacity, as a constituent who has good reason to care about the outcome.

Why this matters to me

[Your personal story goes here — two to four short paragraphs. Include: when you were diagnosed or when you lost the person you lost; age at diagnosis; symptoms or lack of them; any PSA number you know; how the diagnosis was reached (did the person have to push for a test?); what has been lost or what is at stake. Keep it factual. Specific facts move MPs.]

Who dies from this disease, and when

Prostate cancer is now the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the United Kingdom, with more than 64,000 men diagnosed every year and around 12,000 dying from it. That is one death every 45 minutes. In the time it takes you to read this letter, a man will have been diagnosed. Before the week is out, more than two hundred will have died.

Nearly half of prostate cancer cases in England — approximately 47% — are diagnosed at Stage 3 or 4, when the disease is significantly harder to treat and, for many, no longer curable (NHS England Cancer Registration Statistics, 2022). Twelve per cent are already Stage 4 at the point of diagnosis (NPCA State of the Nation Report 2025). That figure describes men who, on the day they hear the words, are told the disease can be managed but not cured.

Prostate cancer is not simply an old man's disease. The mean age at diagnosis in the UK is falling. Men are being diagnosed in their forties and fifties, at the peak of their working lives, with families and dependents. When they are diagnosed late, the human, social and economic loss is greatest.

Why the March recommendation was flawed

The Committee's central concern was overdiagnosis — the fear that a raised PSA would trigger unnecessary biopsy, treatment, and lifelong harm. That was a legitimate concern in the 1990s. It does not describe the modern pathway. A raised PSA today leads to an MRI first, not a biopsy. Low-risk disease is placed on active surveillance, not treated aggressively. Biomarkers refine the decision further. The overdiagnosis figure the modelling relies on assumes a pathway that clinical practice has already left behind.

How the evidence has moved since March

Two months after the recommendation, on 15 May 2026, the Cochrane Collaboration — the internationally recognised gold standard in systematic evidence review — published its updated review of prostate cancer screening. Six randomised controlled trials. Nearly 800,000 men. Twenty-three years of follow-up data. Its conclusion: PSA screening likely reduces prostate cancer mortality, with one to two deaths prevented per 1,000 men tested, and roughly 30% more cancers detected — the majority at earlier, more curable stages.

This is the same body that, in 2013, concluded the evidence for screening was insufficient. The evidence has now moved. Materially. Publicly. And in a way the NSC deliberation did not have the benefit of. The 23-year follow-up of the European Randomised Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, points in the same direction.

On 2 June 2026 the Health Secretary accepted the NSC's recommendation, announced targeted screening for a small group of BRCA2 carriers, a conditional future expansion of the TRANSFORM trial to include Black men, and £20 million in additional research funding. Those measures have merit. They do not constitute a screening programme.

Waiting for TRANSFORM is not what we did for bowel or breast cancer

The argument for continuing to wait rests on TRANSFORM. TRANSFORM is a serious, well-funded, well-designed study. But it answers a different question from the one that matters for policy today. TRANSFORM asks which screening method is best. It does not ask whether we should screen. That question is being treated as open. For the men being diagnosed at Stage 4 while we wait, it is not open.

In 1988, this country began screening women for breast cancer. The mammogram was not a perfect test. It still is not. It produces false positives. It finds cancers that would never have caused harm. It misses some that do. We did not wait for a perfect test. We began the programme, saved lives, and refined the tool in motion — digital mammography, better imaging, risk stratification, all developed with the programme running.

We made the same choice for cervical cancer. We made the same choice for bowel cancer with the faecal immunochemical test, which is itself imperfect and continues to be improved as the programme runs. In each case, we started with the tool we had. In each case, the tool was refined. In each case, thousands of lives have been saved that would otherwise have been lost.

For prostate cancer, we have made the opposite choice. We are waiting. TRANSFORM is the research. A programme is the action. Funding the research is necessary. It is not a substitute for taking the action.

The cost of doing nothing

This is not only a moral question. It is an economic one, and by any honest reckoning the numbers make the case unanswerable.

The modern hormone therapies used in advanced prostate cancer — the androgen receptor inhibitors — cost the NHS tens of thousands of pounds per patient per year at list price. Add chemotherapy, repeated imaging, radiotherapy, hospital admissions, management of side effects, and end-of-life care, and the lifetime cost of treating one man with advanced disease runs comfortably into six figures.

Take a conservative figure of £50,000 in additional lifetime cost attributable to late versus early diagnosis, across the approximately 30,000 men diagnosed late each year in England. That is £1.5 billion a year. Take a higher but entirely plausible figure — £150,000 per patient, reflecting longer survival on sequential modern therapies — and the figure approaches £4.5 billion a year.

These are direct treatment costs only. They do not include the lost earnings of men taken out of work in their 50s — men at the peak of their earning lives. They do not include the tax revenue those earnings would have generated for the Exchequer. They do not include the state support drawn on by families where the primary earner can no longer work. They do not include the children who lose a father, or the widows left to raise them.

Prostate Cancer Research modelled a targeted, risk-stratified screening programme in 2025. Their finding: around £25 million a year — roughly £18 per eligible man, in line with the breast and bowel cancer programmes already running, and approximately 0.01% of the annual NHS budget.

Tens of millions weighed against billions. That is not a close call.

The ask

When the Petitions Committee brings the petition forward, I am asking you to do three things.

First, support the debate. Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the country and the only one of the four major cancers without a national screening programme. The evidence has clearly moved since the March recommendation. It merits a debate on the floor of the House.

Second, attend the debate and put your position on the record. Your constituents facing this diagnosis over the coming decade — and their families — need to know where their Member of Parliament stands.

Third, if you are willing, meet with me. I would welcome the opportunity to talk this through with you in person or by video call, at your convenience.

Thank you for reading, and for the work you do on behalf of the constituency.

Yours sincerely,

[Your name]

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Letter template provided by Smart As Daddy · smartasdaddy.com · @smartasdaddy
Petition: petition.parliament.uk/petitions/751472