Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to help reduce the rate of infant mortality.

The NHS Long Term Plan, published in January 2019, has committed to accelerate action to improve maternity and neonatal care services and to halve the 2010 rates of stillbirths, neonatal and maternal deaths and brain injuries occurring during or soon after birth by 2025 and to reduce the pre-term birth rate from 8% to 6%.

The NHS Long Term Plan includes a range of initiatives with a focus on continuity of carer, reducing pre-term births, and sets out plans to redesign and expand neonatal critical care services to improve the safety and effectiveness of services and experience of families.