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 potential implications for his policies of the ELSA Diabetes screening study; and whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of scaling it to a universal programme.

In the United Kingdom, national screening programmes are introduced based on the recommendations of the UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC), an independent scientific advisory committee which advises ministers and the National Health Service in all four countries on all aspects of population and targeted screening and supports implementation.

The UK NSC is aware of the ELSA study that is looking at screening children for type 1 diabetes and looks forward to receiving the results of this study when the trial is complete.