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 whether the newborn screening programme is fit for purpose and screens for all conditions.

The NHS Newborn Blood Spot Programme screens for ten rare but serious conditions and consistently achieves very high coverage, with the most recent figure at 98% in quarter two of 2025/26.

Coverage of babies who move into the area after birth is lower, at 83%, so the programme is less effective for this subgroup, although numbers are much smaller.

A total of 570,865 babies were screened in 2024/25, demonstrating the programme is operating effectively at scale, and the system is robust enough to deliver screening across a large cohort.

Over one million babies have been screened for severe combined immunodeficiency since the launch of the in-service evaluation (ISE) in 2017. NHS England’s report on the 30-month ISE evaluation period found that screening detected ten babies with the condition who would otherwise have gone undetected until infections developed, thus preventing serious illness.

NHS England is currently planning a large-scale ISE of screening for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) in newborn screening services, which will help inform a future UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC) recommendation on whether screening for SMA should be added to the NHS Newborn Blood Spot Screening Programme. My Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, asked officials to explore whether the ISE, which was due to start in January 2027, could be expanded to cover the whole of England and start earlier. It has now been confirmed that the ISE will start three months earlier, in October 2026. We will announce further updates regarding its expansion in due course.