Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the effect on testing timeframes of changes being made to the provision of molecular pathology testing in cancer care and treatment.

NHS England is mobilising the Genomic Medicine Service which brings together existing clinical genetics services and the new genomic laboratory infrastructure. By consolidating genomic testing services into seven Genomic Laboratory Hubs (GLHs), the National Health Service is able to operate more efficiently using cutting-edge high throughput technology and supporting make equitable access. The new service will enable additional genomic information to inform treatment and enable turnaround times to be kept to a minimum.

The turnaround times which are set out in the GLH service specification fall within the existing 62 day standard for receiving first treatment for cancer.