Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether they plan to update the Department of Health and Social Care’s Required Standard Operating Procedures for approved independent sector abortion providers to collect data on medical complications arising from women accessing home-use early medical abortions, presented across all clinical settings, to measure the efficacy of the present policy on telemedicine.

The Department’s Required Standard Operating Procedures for the approval of independent sector places for termination of pregnancy in England (RSOPs) were last updated in March 2023. The RSOPs are kept under review and are updated as required, for example due to changes in abortion legislation, or if issues are identified which need to be addressed.

The RSOPS are also reviewed, in liaison with key stakeholders such as the Care Quality Commission, prior to the renewal of the Secretary of State’s approval of all currently approved independent sector abortion clinics, which happens every 4 years (all clinics are currently approved until 31 July 2026). However, there are presently no plans to update the RSOPs to include expectations around the collection of data on medical complications.

Known complications resulting from legal abortions in England and Wales are recorded on the HSA4 form up until the patient has been discharged from the abortion service. For medical terminations where either one or both stages of the treatment were administered at the patient’s usual place of residence, complications are less likely to be known by the provider and recorded on the HSA4. Complications are also recorded in other patient record systems such as Hospital Episodes Statistics, where the woman has attended a health service after being discharged.

To improve the quality of data available on abortion complications, the Department is taking forward a project to improve our understanding of the data.