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 ensure that the normal standard of pregnancy care continues during the covid-19 outbreak.

The National Health Service has made arrangements to ensure that women are supported and cared for safely through pregnancy, birth and the period afterwards during this pandemic when there will be extra pressures on healthcare services.

Throughout the pandemic, NHS England and NHS Improvement have been guiding maternity services to prioritise maintaining safe and personalised maternity care by making adjustments to service provision only where necessitated by the local impact of COVID-19.

Wherever possible, services have been asked to reinstate a fully personalised approach to meeting the needs of individual women and their families and the level of care contacts and choice options available to women and their partners across the maternity pathway.