Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of testing newborn babies for spinal muscular atrophy.

Work is already underway to assess the potential merits of testing newborn babies for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).

This is following the UK National Screening Committee’s two-fold recommendation in 2023, to simultaneously develop a new cost-effectiveness screening modelling study for the United Kingdom’s screening context, and to start scoping work for an in-service evaluation of newborn screening for SMA in real world National Health Services in the UK.