Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the implications for his policies of analysis of data conducted by The Independent newspaper in 2014 suggesting that between 1,400 and 4,700 girls are missing from the national census records of England and Wales due to the selective abortion of female foetuses.

Since reports emerged in 2014 on concerns about sex ratios at birth in the United Kingdom, the Department has published an annual analysis. The latest analysis was published in October 2021 and found no evidence for sex selective abortions occurring in the UK between 2015 and 2019. In this period, there were 105.5 male to 100 female births, which is below the accepted upper limit of 107. Whilst this data shows that sex selection abortions are having no impact on birth ratios, we will continue to work with abortion providers to monitor this issue.