Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will take steps to collect data on the number and proportion of women who consume alcohol while pregnant.

Asking pregnant women about their alcohol consumption is a routine part of maternity appointment booking. This data is collected in NHS England’s Maternity Services Dataset and forms part of official statistics in the Department’s Child and Maternal Health Profiles. In 2018/19, 4.1% of women self-reported drinking while pregnant at their appointment booking. Work is ongoing to update the number and proportion of women who use alcohol while pregnant from 2019/20 onwards. We have no estimates of the number of babies who have developed foetal alcohol spectrum disorder in each of the last ten years.