Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to reduce smoking amongst pregnant women.

The Government is committed to reducing smoking prevalence in pregnant women and will be publishing its new Tobacco Control Plan for England shortly. This will aim to reduce smoking prevalence generally and includes actions to reduce smoking during pregnancy.

Public Health England continues to work closely with NHS England to increase the number of women having a smoke-free pregnancy through a variety of initiatives. This is a key priority within NHS England’s Maternity Transformation Programme and a key action to reduce stillbirths and meet the Secretary of State’s ambition to halve the number of stillbirths by 2030, and to reduce stillbirths by 20% by 2020.