Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reasons the GP contract includes a postnatal check for babies but not for mothers.

Under the contracts between general practitioner (GP) practices and NHS England, where a practice provides maternity medical services, the practice is required to provide to female patients and their babies all necessary maternity medical services throughout the postnatal period other than neonatal checks.

The GP contract regulations define the postnatal period as “the period beginning with the conclusion of the delivery of the baby or the patient’s discharge from secondary care services (whichever is the later) and ending on the fourteenth day after the birth”.