Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of £985 per cycle payments to egg donors on the level of incentive to women from the poorest backgrounds to donate eggs because of financial need.

The compensation rate for egg donation is set by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), as provided for in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. The HFEA has advised that the donor compensation levels originally set in 2011 followed a thorough ethical review, which identified a set of principles that ensured altruism remained at the heart of donation and that there were not any unjustifiable barriers to donation. The HFEA has advised that the increase in donor compensation from 1 October 2024 to £985 per cycle reflects the rise in inflation since the compensation rates were first introduced in 2011.

Academic research in the United Kingdom has consistently found that donating eggs and sperm is driven by altruism, and HFEA published data shows that egg and sperm donors in England from 2011 to 2020 lived in similar or more affluent socio-economic areas than the general population.