Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord O’Shaughnessy on 20 March (HL5811), why they do not maintain a list of foetal anomalies that cannot be identified before 24 weeks gestation.

It is not possible to detect every condition in every pregnancy at screening before 24 weeks of gestation. A screening test is not diagnostic; some conditions may subsequently be detected either at clinical ultrasound examination later in pregnancy, at birth or in the early postnatal period.