Wes Streeting calls for apology after NHS website claims first-cousin marriages have 'advantages'

The health secretary has called for an apology after an NHS website suggested there are benefits to first-cousin marriage, despite the known increased risk of birth defects.

An article on NHS England’s Genomics Education Programme website last week – which has since been taken down – outlined the risks but said first-cousin marriage is linked to “stronger extended family support systems and economic advantages”.

Research, including from the long-running Born in Bradford study, has found children from first-cousin marriages are more likely to have speech and language difficulties, less likely to reach a “good stage of development” and have more GP practice appointments.

The study also found that, after allowing for risk factors such as age, obesity and smoking, the risk of congenital anomalies was doubled (3% to 6%) in first-cousin marriages and accounted for 30% of genetic disorders.

Interviews among 13,500 families between 2007 and 2011 for the study found 60% of couples of Pakistani heritage were related by blood (first cousin, second cousin or other blood relative), with 37% first-cousin marriages.

This compares with less than 1% in white British couples.

Marrying a first cousin is legal in the UK.

Health secretary Wes Streeting told LBC radio on Tuesday he thought an apology should be issued over the NHS material, which was first highlighted in the Mail on Sunday.

Streeting said: “The first I heard of this was when I saw that report, I asked immediately, ‘What on earth is going on here and what are they playing at?’

“The advice has been taken down but why was it ever there in the first place?

“The medical science and evidence is clear.

“First-cousin marriages are high risk and unsafe, we see the genetic defects it causes, the harm that it causes.

“That’s why that advice should never have been published.”

Asked whether he thinks there should be an apology for publishing the guidance, he said: “Yeah, I do think that.”