Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what analysis his Department has undertaken of the (a) cost and (b) effectiveness of mandatory testing of babies at birth for neuroblastoma.

The United Kingdom National Screening Committee (UK NSC) last reviewed the evidence to screen for neuroblastoma in 2015 and recommended that screening should not be offered. This is because the evidence published at the time of the review was insufficient in terms of quality and volume to accurately answer key questions to introduce screening which included no evidence that a screening test that would only detect cases of neuroblastoma that needed treatment; and no evidence that neuroblastoma screening (at any age) would reduce the number of deaths from neuroblastoma.

The UK NSC is due to review the evidence for neuroblastoma in 2019.