HSSD gets it wrong on cancer screening

HEALTH and Social Services has been forced to reveal a 'significant underspend' in a potential lifesaving screening service after claiming previously that it had spent its entire budget.

The full extent of the miscalculation in the 2012 and 2013 bowel cancer screening funding will not be revealed until next year, but Treasury and Resources is scrutinising the figures.

The shock admission comes amid growing concerns that HSSD was not screening as many islanders as had been promised.

In an email to all deputies, HSSD minister Mark Dorey revealed significant underspends in the 2012 and 2013 budget, following an original business case allocation of £294,000 and £327,500 respectively.

Long-term campaigner and former board member Mike Hadley, pictured, who claims that the underspend could be more than £200,000, said that islanders were dying unnecessarily because just a single cohort of 60-year-olds was being screened and not another group of people aged 65, as had been planned.

He said Deputy Dorey had misled the States and called on him to resign.