Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department has taken to help improve genomic testing and care in the UK.

The NHS Genomic Medicine Service was launched in 2018 to support standardised, high quality and equitable access to genomic medicine across the National Health Service in England. Since then, significant progress has been made to improve genomic testing and care. This includes the establishment of a national network of seven NHS Genomic Laboratory Hubs to deliver testing as directed by the National Genomic Test Directory, which outlines the full range of genomic testing offered by the NHS, including tests for 3,200 rare diseases and over 200 cancer clinical indications.

The NHS now offers several world-leading services. It is the first health care system in the world to systematically offer whole genome sequencing (WGS) as part of routine care, and it has launched a rapid WGS service for acutely unwell children with a likely monogenic disorder and a world-leading National Fetal Exome Sequencing Service.

The NHS also has an important role in delivering a comprehensive clinical genomic and counselling service for patients of all ages and their families, who have, or are at risk of having, a rare genetic and genomic condition, including inherited cancer.

Last year, in October 2022, NHS England published the first NHS Genomics Strategy, ‘Accelerating Genomic Medicine in the NHS’, which outlines the future vision for embedding genomics in the NHS over the next five years.