Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government which government department or organisation or body in the National Health Service is currently responsible for setting or determining the national policy for carrier screening for (1) Tay Sachs disease, (2) Familial Dysautonomia and Canavan disease, and (3) other severe inherited genetic disorders, in at risk populations without an established family history.

The UK National Screening Committee makes recommendations on whole population screening programmes. It is for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence or its accredited guideline producing bodies to recommend care and testing of people at high risk.

NHS England has commissioning arrangements in place for carrier testing for Tay Sachs disease for at risk populations. Genetic testing will be undertaken where there is a known family history, which indicates a risk of the specific condition or in response to the individual’s clinical symptoms. In the absence of a family history or clinical symptoms it is the responsibility of clinical commissioning groups based on their local needs as to whether they fund referrals to clinical genetics for carrier screening for Tay Sachs disease.

Genomics offers a great opportunity to improve our insight into genetic diseases. It is for this reason that the Government launched a world-leading project to sequence 100,000 genomes from National Health Service patients and established Genomics England, a subsidiary of the Department, to deliver the project.