Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how his Department plans to ensure that the initial launch of noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) will be expanded to enable all women to have the choice to utilise that technology during pregnancy through the NHS.

Non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) will be available to women as an additional option as part of the NHS Fetal Anomaly Screening Programme. NIPT will be offered if the woman has been identified by existing tests as having a higher chance of having a baby with Down’s syndrome, Edwards’ syndrome or Patau’s syndrome.

The target date to commence the offer of NIPT is 1 June 2021. NIPT will be nationally introduced as an ‘evaluative roll out’. This means the programme will be able to monitor how the introduction of NIPT is working at each stage and make any required changes to the pathway and screening processes quickly and effectively.