Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has considered requesting the National Institute for Clinical Excellence to set national clinical guidelines for developmental language disorders.

Topics for new or updated National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance are considered through an established prioritisation process. Decisions as to whether NICE will create new, or update existing, guidance are overseen by a prioritisation board, chaired by NICE’s Chief Medical Officer.

The NICE Prioritisation Board considered developmental language disorder: diagnosis and management as a topic for guidance development at its meeting on 20 November 2025. They recognised that developmental language disorder is a significant condition that affects a large population. However, they agreed that there is unlikely to be sufficient evidence available at this time to be able to develop a useful and usable guideline. Therefore, the topic was not selected for guidance development at this time.