'Stopping breast screening at 70 is crazy. It's writing off older women'

Cancer surgery has convinced Labour peer Margaret Hodge that test rules must change, she tells Rachel Sylvester

- Rachel Sylvester

Margaret Hodge had a sister and an aunt who were both diagnosed with breast cancer. "It's prevalent in my family," says the former minister and Labour peer. "Then my daughter got it and I thought: 'Oh my God, I haven't had a mammogram for ages."

Now 80, Lady Hodge had stopped receiving invitations to breast screening because the NHS does not routinely offer mammograms to women over the age of 70. When she stood down as an MP at last year's election, she rang up her GP and asked to be screened.

The results that came through in November were a "terrible shock", she says. "They found a tumour and it was cancerous, so I had to get my head around that. Then I had more and more tests. Every time they did another test, they found another tumour. They ended up finding three small tumours in the breast."

Hodge had surgery and "came back thinking: 'Thank God that's all over". Then, just after Christmas, the consultant got in touch again. "He said to me: 'You've got a busy breast, Margaret. They had found some more in the biopsy they did on the tissue that they had taken.

"So I had a second operation, which, at the age of 80, was quite heavy going when I had never had an operation in my life before." Since then she has had radiotherapy and is continuing to have treatment with three preventative drugs. "I'm back at work but I'm knackered," she says.