Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many GP practices returned more than 1000 HSA4 forms which record an abortion by medicine administered at home in (1) 2023, and (2) 2024.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Department collects information on abortions via the HSA4 abortion notification form. The HSA4 form does not capture information on whether the form was returned by a general practice.

The HSA4 form does capture information on the hospital or clinic where the termination took place, and whether any medicine was administered at the patient’s usual place of residence. However, the publication of the Abortion Statistics for England and Wales from 2023 onwards has been delayed due to several operational issues. These include issues associated with moving to a new data processing system and an increase in the number of paper abortion notification forms to process. We will announce the dates of the publication of the data for 2023, and later 2024, in due course.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many GP practices returned more than 100 HSA4 forms which record an abortion by medicine administered at home in (1) 2023, and (2) 2024.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Department collects information on abortions via the HSA4 abortion notification form. The HSA4 form does not capture information on whether the form was returned by a general practice.

The HSA4 form does capture information on the hospital or clinic where the termination took place, and whether any medicine was administered at the patient’s usual place of residence. However, the publication of the Abortion Statistics for England and Wales from 2023 onwards has been delayed due to several operational issues. These include issues associated with moving to a new data processing system and an increase in the number of paper abortion notification forms to process. We will announce the dates of the publication of the data for 2023, and later 2024, in due course.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many individuals received medicines for abortion at home via post in (1) 2023, and (2) 2024.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Department collects information on abortions via the HSA4 abortion notification form. The HSA4 form does not capture information on whether abortion medicine was sent via the post, and so the Department does not hold this information.

The HSA4 form does capture whether the medicine was administered at the patient’s usual place of residence. This information is published in the Abortion Statistics for England and Wales for the years 2018 to 2022. However, publication of the abortion statistics for England and Wales from 2023 onwards has been delayed due to several operational issues. These include issues associated with moving to a new data processing system and an increase in the number of paper abortion notification forms to process. We will announce the dates of the publication of the data for 2023, and later 2024, in due course.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many officials (1) in total, and (2) in number of full-time equivalent staff, have been involved in supporting the promoters of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill in the Ministry of Justice since November 2020.

Answered by Baroness Levitt - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)

The number of full-time equivalent staff involved in providing technical drafting support and workability advice to the Sponsors of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill has fluctuated since January 2025. As of 1 September 2025, there were 3.7 full-time equivalent (FTE) officials in the Ministry of Justice.

Where required, contributions on specific issues may have been sought from other teams; however, the FTE cannot be accurately quantified for these issues.

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many meetings ministers in the Ministry of Justice have had with promoters of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill since November 2020.

Answered by Baroness Levitt - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)

Ministers in the Ministry of Justice have had 12 meetings with the Sponsors of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (Kim Leadbeater MP and Lord Falconer of Thoroton).

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many meetings ministers in the Department of Health and Social Care have had with promoters of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill since November 2020.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

Ministers in the Department have had 15 meetings with the sponsors of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, namely the Hon. Member Kim Leadbeater and Lord Falconer of Thoroton.