Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure progress in research on genomic healthcare in the UK.

Genomics is changing the future of health and medicine, with the potential to underpin a new era of precision healthcare. We have led the way globally with landmark initiatives such as the 100,000 Genomes Project, the largest national sequencing project anywhere in the world.

The creation of the Genomic Medicine Service in the National Health Service, the first of its kind in the world, is vital to realising the potential benefits of genomics both for direct care and for research. As the evidence grows, we will further embed genomics into routine healthcare and make the United Kingdom the number one destination to research and develop the latest scientific advances in genomic healthcare.

Over the next five years, the UK will aim to sequence five million genomes, including at least one million whole genomes from the NHS and UK Biobank. This puts the UK at the forefront of global ambition in genomics.

In February, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Innovation (Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford), announced that a new National Genomic Healthcare Strategy will developed to set out how the whole genomics community can work together to make the UK the global leader in genomic healthcare.