Asked by: Baroness Northover (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they will bring back the six-week post-delivery check for all mothers with their GPs, including questions on the mother’s physical and mental health as well as on the baby.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
In December 2023, NHS England published new guidance on the six-to-eight-week postnatal check-up for all women who have given birth. As a result of this guidance, all new mothers in England will receive a more comprehensive mental and physical check-up from their general practitioner (GP) in the weeks after they give birth. The check-up will cover a range of topics such as mental health, physical recovery, breastfeeding, and support with family planning.
The routine check-up provides an important opportunity for GPs to listen to women in a discrete, supportive environment, and to assess and support women not just in their physical recovery post-birth but also their mental health, making sure any woman needing extra mental health support can be referred, if appropriate, to a specialist straight away.
The six-to-eight-week postnatal check-ups should be offered by GP surgeries, but mothers can also request an appointment for a check themselves, especially if they have any concerns.
Asked by: Baroness Northover (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they will bring forward an overarching national maternity strategy to aid the improvement of maternity services and prevent birth trauma.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and NHS England Chief Executive Officer Amanda Pritchard both support the overarching recommendation from the Birth Trauma All-party Parliamentary Group inquiry report, for a comprehensive national strategy to improve maternity services. We will update on next steps in due course.
We are already making good progress on many of the individual recommendations set out in the inquiry report. This includes new guidance for general practitioners on the postnatal check-up that women should be offered six to eight weeks after giving birth, which is solely focused on the mother. We are also rolling out new physical and mental health services for new mums and mums-to-be so that they are available in all areas of England.
Asked by: Baroness Northover (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to (1) recruit, (2) train, and (3) retain, more midwives, obstetricians and anaesthetists to ensure safe levels of staffing in maternity services.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The number of midwives has already increased by 21.5% since 2010 and by 5.8% in the past year. The Government is further increasing the number of midwives by funding an additional 160 new posts over three years to support the continued growth of the maternity and neonatal workforce.
The Government and the National Health Service are investing almost £35 million over three years to further improve maternity safety across England which will support specialist training for staff, additional numbers of midwives and support to ensure maternity services listen to and act on women’s experiences to improve care.
The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan sets an ambition to increase the number of nursing and midwifery training places to around 58,000 by 2031/32. We will work towards achieving this by increasing places to over 44,000 by 2028/29, with 20% of registered nurses qualifying through apprenticeship routes compared to the current 9% and 5% of midwives to train through an apprenticeship, compared to less than 1% currently.
The Plan also sets out the steps the NHS and its partners need to take to deliver an NHS workforce that meets the changing needs of the population over the next 15 years. The Government is backing this Plan with over £2.4 billion over the next five years to fund additional education and training places. This forms part of our ambition to expand the number of midwifery training places from 3,778 in 2022, to 4,269 by 2028, providing a substantial uplift in the workforce pipeline to meet future demands.
The NHS England's nursing and midwifery retention programme aims to support organisations in assessing and implementing a set of interventions aligned with the People Promise. This initiative focuses on promoting flexible working arrangements, fostering a supportive, inclusive, and compassionate workplace environment. For 2023/24, an investment of £5.75 million is being made in neonatal nurse quality roles, funding at least 98 full-time equivalent posts to support staff retention and learning from incidents, ensuring every trust has funding for this role.
Asked by: Baroness Northover (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government when all mothers' health records will be digitalised and shared between all healthcare professionals to improve communications between health workers and mothers.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Currently all maternity services have the ability to create digital records, and the sharing of those records across all providers involved in the care of the individual is done by a platform called Connecting Care Records. Integrated care boards (ICBs) should share historical care records between National Health Service trusts and other providers of care within their system, such as general practices and local authorities.
By March 2025, many more Connecting Care Records platforms will be providing access to data held in other ICB shared systems, allowing authorised health and care professionals to have safe, secure access to patient data, where and when its needed, regardless of where the person resides or where the care is provided.
Asked by: Baroness Northover (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government when they plan to the respond to the letter from Professor Brian Bell of the Migration Advisory Committee requesting data for a rapid review of the Graduate Route.
Answered by Lord Sharpe of Epsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
We provided the requested data to the Migration Advisory Committee by 26 March 2024.
Asked by: Baroness Northover (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to achieve universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights as per Sustainable Development Goal target 5.6.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The White Paper on International Development reaffirmed the UK's commitment to deploy policy and investment to advance and strongly defend universal access to comprehensive Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) in line with Sustainable Development Goal target 5.6.
The UK Government is committed to driving progress and demonstrating leadership on SRHR globally as a major donor, through our diplomatic network and in collaboration with partners. For example, the UNFPA Supplies Partnership averted 8 million unintended pregnancies, 2.2 million unsafe abortion and 170,000 maternal and child deaths in 2022, with the UK as their largest donor. The Women's Integrated Sexual Health (WISH) Programme supported 9.5 million women to use modern methods of contraception and averted over 45,000 maternal deaths, 5 million unsafe abortions and over 16 million unintended pregnancies from the programme's inception to 2021. In May 2023, the UK joined other G7 leaders in re-asserting the critical role of comprehensive SRHR in our efforts to achieve gender equality, explicitly recognising the need for access to safe and legal abortion as well as post abortion care.
Asked by: Baroness Northover (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to their policy paper 2024 voluntary scheme for branded medicines pricing, access and growth: summary of the heads of agreement, published on 20 November 2023, what assessment they have made of any potential detrimental impact on women's health if the tax on the contraceptive implant Nexplanon is increased to 35 per cent.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The 2024 voluntary scheme for branded medicines pricing, access and growth (VPAG) introduces a new way of controlling the cost of older medicines that is explicitly pro-innovation and pro-competition. We do not anticipate this resulting in a detrimental impact on women's health or, given the available mitigations, on the supply of medicines.
Medicines for women’s health will be subject to the VPAG in the same way that all other medicines are. They will be subject to the top up payment percentage only when they have not seen a sufficient price decline since the active substance lost market exclusivity.
In exceptional circumstances, where a product would otherwise be uneconomic to supply, companies can apply to the Department for a price increase or for an adjustment to the top up payment percentage that applies.
Asked by: Baroness Northover (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government, ahead of the 30-year review of the International Conference on Population and Development Programme of Action, what progress they have made since 1994 on sexual and reproductive health and rights in the UK.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We are proud of the United Kingdom’s progress regarding sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in the last thirty years and of our country’s leadership as the top performing country in SRHR policies according to the European Combined SRHR Ranking Atlas 2020-2023.
In Great Britain, women have access to safe, regulated National Health Service-funded termination of pregnancy services under the Abortion Act 1967. Abortion was decriminalised in Northern Ireland through the introduction of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc.) Act 2019. Health is devolved in the UK, and progress on SRHR in England has included several areas of SRHR.
Contraception plays a vital role in preventing unintended pregnancy and a wide range of contraceptive choices are available free of charge in a range of primary and community care venues in England, including through the NHS Pharmacy Contraception Service since April 2023. The conception rate amongst women under 18 years old in England is now lower than it was twenty years ago and has more than halved between 2011 and 2021. The conception rate for those aged under 16 years old is approximately a third of what it was 10 years ago.
The 2022 Women’s Health Strategy for England sets out our plans for boosting the health and wellbeing of women and girls, and for improving how the health and care system engages and listens to all women. This includes investing £25 million in women’s health hubs to improve women’s access to essential services for menstrual problems, contraception, menopause care and more.
Local authorities in England are responsible for commissioning comprehensive open access to most sexual health services (SHSs) through the public health grant funded at £3.5 billion in 2023/24. Individual local authorities are well placed to make funding and commissioning decisions about the SHSs that best meet the needs of their local populations. This includes oral HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, which has been routinely available in specialist SHSs since 2020.
The National Chlamydia Screening Programme focuses on reducing reproductive harm of untreated infection in young women aged 15 to 24 years old. The programme has the secondary aims of reducing re-infections and onward transmission of chlamydia and raising awareness of good sexual health.
Human papillomavirus (HPV) is a very common sexually transmitted infection, and some types can cause genital warts or cervical cancer. The national HPV vaccination programme was introduced for girls in September 2008 and extended to eligible boys in September 2019. In 2022, genital warts diagnoses among young women aged between 15 and 17 years old attending SHSs were 67.9% lower than in 2018.
The HIV Action Plan is the cornerstone of our approach in England to drive forward progress and achieve our goal to end new HIV transmissions, AIDS and HIV-related deaths within England by 2030 backed by almost £45m over 2020-2025. We continue to celebrate the progress made from 2019 when the Government first made its HIV commitments, with approximately 4,500 people living with undiagnosed HIV and extremely high levels of antiretroviral therapy coverage and viral suppression.
Asked by: Baroness Northover (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government, ahead of the 30-year review of the International Conference on Population and Development Programme of Action, what progress they have made since 1994 on sexual and reproductive health and rights in their international work.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The UK Government continues to use its diplomatic and development levers to drive progress and demonstrate leadership on sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) globally and the recently released White Paper on International Development reaffirmed the UK's commitment to deploy policy and investment to advance and strongly defend universal access to comprehensive SRHR.
As the largest donor to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Supplies Programme, the Partnership averted 8 million unintended pregnancies, 2.2 million unsafe abortion and 170,000 maternal and child deaths in 2022 alone. Since 2018, UK aid support to the Women's Integrated Sexual Health Programme has supported 9.5 million women to use modern methods of contraception and, in 2021, over 12,000 maternal deaths and 1.8 million unsafe abortions were averted.
This year, the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights ranked the UK highest in the region (91.3 per cent) for our commitment to achieving SRHR for all, including our domestic laws and policies, and our overseas development assistance dedicated to progressing comprehensive SRHR for all.
Asked by: Baroness Northover (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they will restore the four per cent of UK official development assistance for sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Answered by Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park
Comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) is central to achieving FCDO commitments in the International Development Strategy, our approach to end the preventable deaths of mothers, new-borns and children by 2030 and the International Women and Girls Strategy.
The FCDO ensures the aid budget is directed towards our priorities, delivers value for the taxpayer and meets the UK Government's commitment to spend 0.5 per cent of Gross National Income (GNI) on Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) until the fiscal situation allows a return to 0.7 per cent. The International Development Strategy, which includes comprehensive SRHR, will guide aid prioritisation decisions, alongside the International Women and Girls Strategy. We will update on planned allocations for this spending review period in due course.