Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made a recent assessment with Cabinet colleagues of the potential merits of providing NHS standard hearing tests to children in primary schools in (a) Yeovil constituency and (b) England.

The UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC) is an independent scientific advisory committee advising Ministers and the National Health Service about all aspects of population and targeted screening. It reviewed screening children for hearing problems in 2019 and did not recommend school age screening unless already implemented in an area. A summary of the recommendations conclusions is available at the following link:

https://view-health-screening-recommendations.service.gov.uk/hearing-child/

We would encourage anyone with concerns about their child’s hearing to speak with their general practitioner.

The NHS does, however, run a national newborn hearing screening programme offering screening to all babies in England ideally within the first four to five weeks after they are born. The test can be done for babies up to the age of three months old. Newborn hearing screening aims to identify permanent moderate, severe and profound deafness and hearing impairment in newborn babies.