Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many bedrooms are available for parents and carers in neonatal units, broken down by (a) region, (b) Integrated Care Board, (c) Trust and (d) in England.

Not all maternity hospitals are currently able to offer adequate accommodation for families who have experienced a bereavement. This is due to the historic undercapitalisation across the National Health Service, as highlighted by the Darzi Report.

As a first step towards improving our maternity and neonatal estate, we are investing over £100 million through the 2025/26 Estates Safety Fund to address critical safety risks on the maternity estate, enabling better care for mothers and their newborns.

The provision of bereavement suites is included in current estate standards on the design and planning of new maternity units. This is delivering improvements, as our enquiries suggest that current NHS capital programmes progressing maternity new builds include the provision of an appropriate bereavement suite.