Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what progress they have made in setting up a laboratory able to conduct blood folate status analysis.

Blood samples collected in the National Diet and Nutrition Survey since July 2014 have been analysed for total serum folate at the Medical Research Council Elsie Widdowson Laboratory in Cambridge using a mass spectrometry-based method.

Analysis for whole blood folate continues to be carried out at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States using a microbiological assay, as the method has not yet been successfully transferred to mass spectrometry.