Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government how the policy of not collecting data on complications, via Abortion Notification System and Hospital Episode Statistics, arising from at home medical abortions after the patient’s discharge from the care of the abortion service, accords with the commitment to collect empirical data to women’s improve health outcomes as outlined in the Government’s Women’s Health Strategy for England.

The Women’s Health Strategy sets out our ambitions to make better use of data already collected, and to address gaps in women’s health data to improve women’s health outcomes.

The Department routinely publishes data on abortion complications reported via the Abortion Notification System. In addition, the Department committed to publishing a one-time analysis exploring whether Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) can be used as a supplementary source for data on abortion complications. The HES data in the publication includes abortion complications arising from any abortion which resulted in an inpatient admission.

The Department is now inviting views from third parties on abortion statistics for England and Wales, including the future publication of abortion complications data, via an online user engagement survey and via email.