Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the NHS Digital and MHRA data publication Medicines and Pregnancy Registry: Antiepileptic use in females aged 0 to 54 in England, what recent steps he has taken to ensure all relevant data is gathered for this publication, including from GPs.

The Medicines and Pregnancy Registry’s publication is an analysis of existing administrative patient data as a proof of concept, to establish the use and value of these data sets in supporting robust and sustainable medicine registries. The data produced is designed to support the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency in monitoring the success of the valproate pregnancy prevention plan and to enable the health and care system to understand outcomes for women prescribed antiepileptics during pregnancy and their children and improve patient care.