Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the number of premature babies in England in the last 12 months; and how many of those babies had one or both parents take a course in neonatal resuscitation on discharge.

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) publishes data on premature births in its Birth Characteristics publication. The latest data available is for 2016 which shows that there were 54,143 pre-term births (live births before 37 weeks gestation) in England and Wales. The ONS do not publish this information for England only.

Data on the number of parents that receive neonatal resuscitation training is not collected centrally. However, all neonatal units provide resuscitation training for the parents of babies considered at higher risk of potentially needing resuscitation in the community, which would include babies born prematurely. The training is provided by members of staff from within the neonatal unit and is organised and delivered at a local level.