Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made a comparative assessment of the number of conditions screened under the NHS bloodspot programme with similar programmes in other European countries.

The UK National Screening Committee recently published a paper comparing the United Kingdom with other European countries, which is available at the following link:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(23)00133-3/fulltext

The paper will hopefully improve understanding of the way in which screening principles are developed and applied in new-born blood spot screening settings across the continent.