Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what discussions his Department has had with NHS England about ensuring that all trusts provide the necessary facilities and support to ensure that families can be with their babies while they are in neonatal care, as set out in the national service specification for neonatal critical care.

The Department and NHS England regularly discuss maternity and newborn care.

NHS England's Neonatal Service Specification requires that all commissioned providers of Neonatal Services provide appropriate family facilities. The current service specification states that:

Facilities should be available to support family centred care including access to parent accommodation, private and comfortable breastfeeding/expressing facilities, and private room for confidential conversations and so on.

A revised specification has recently been drafted, within which this statement has been strengthened. The revised draft specification has been out to public consultation and the Clinical Reference Group is currently responding to the comments received. It is anticipated that the revised service specification will be included in NHS England contracts with providers from April 2015.

As part of NHS England's Service Specification Compliance process, all units will have assessed their level of compliance against the service specification. Where relevant, units will have highlighted where they are not yet meeting this requirement. In those circumstances, the Area Team Commissioner and the relevant provider will have agreed an action plan for achievement of the standard, where is it not currently being met, within 12 months. The actual facilities provided for families are locally determined and the exact number of overnight beds may therefore vary from service to service.