Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of any trends in the last five years regarding the number of pregnancies terminated due to neural tube defects.

This information is not collected in the format requested. Information on neural tube defects is collected by the number of mentions, rather than number of pregnancies terminated. It is possible for a pregnancy to have multiple neural tube defects. From 2017 to 2021, there were 4,697 mentions of congenital malformations of the nervous system in Ground E abortions for residents of England and Wales. This has remained stable over the last five years, other than a small decline in 2019. Data for 2022 is due to be published in June 2023.