Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to improve access to IVF for women whose partner has children from a previous relationship.

The Government is clear that it expects local National Health Service bodies to commission fertility services in line with National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines, to ensure equitable access across England.

We are aware that some individual clinical commissioning groups set additional non-clinical criteria, which can include having children from previous relationships. This is outside the best clinical practice within the NICE fertility guidelines and we are currently considering options to address these variations.