Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to reduce regional variation in IVF provision following publication of the updated NICE fertility guidelines.

Funding decisions for health services in England are made by integrated care boards (ICBs) and are based on the clinical needs of their local population.

On 31 March, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published its updated fertility guideline, which recommends that women under 40 years old who meet the clinical eligibility criteria should be offered up to three full cycles of in vitro fertilisation (IVF).

There are no plans to introduce statutory duties on ICBs to deliver NICE fertility guidelines on IVF cycles. We expect ICBs to consider and reflect the updated NICE fertility guideline in their commissioning decisions, and we are working with NHS England to support greater consistency in provision.

The Government published the Women's Health Strategy on 15 April which commits to ensuring that every woman can easily access fertility services, and we are currently working to assess the current provision of National Health Service commissioned fertility services as a baseline to inform supporting material for every ICB to implement the new NICE guidelines in full.