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 potential impact of increasing the payments made to women for their eggs from 1 October 2024 on trends in the number of (a) low income women and (b) students who may undergo egg retrieval in exchange for money.

The Department has no plans to make an assessment, as the compensation rate for egg donation is set by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), as provided for in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. The HFEA has advised that the increase in donor compensation from 1 October 2024 reflects the rise in inflation since the compensation rates were first introduced in 2011. Academic research in the United Kingdom has consistently found that donating eggs and sperm is driven by altruism, and HFEA published data shows that egg and sperm donors in England from 2011 to 2020 lived in similar or more affluent socio-economic areas than the general population.