Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the National Genomic Healthcare Strategy will include all types of cancer.

Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) of cancer was a key part of the 100,000 Genomes Project and from 2019 the National Health Service will begin to offer WGS as part of clinical care for people with specific types of cancer, for which there is likely to be the greatest patient benefit from using WGS: sarcoma, and acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), and children with cancer.

The Government is committed to making the United Kingdom home of genomic healthcare and the National Genomic Healthcare Strategy, which we plan to launch in autumn 2019, will set out how the genomics community can work together to make the UK the global leader. The strategy will look at how genomic analysis at system-wide level can continue to be optimised for the benefit of UK patients with a range of conditions, including cancer, but it will not seek to focus in each type of cancer individually.