Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the number of pregnant women with diabetes that have taken 5mg of folic acid a day until the end of the 12th week of pregnancy.

The National Pregnancy in Diabetes (NPID) Audit provides a view of the care of women with pre-existing diabetes¹ in pregnancy, and the outcomes of those pregnancies. NPID covers pregnancies in England and Wales and measures the effectiveness of care against National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Clinical Guidelines². In 2016, 172 antenatal diabetes services participated in the audit.

The most recent NPID Audit in 2016 reports on the number of pregnancies where women with diabetes took folic acid at a dose of 5mg up to the end of the twelfth week of pregnancy and can be found in the following table.

The following table details the number of pregnancies which ended in 2016 in women with pre-existing type 1 or type 2 diabetes, and where the mother took a 5mg dose of folic acid up to the end of the 12^th week of pregnancy.

Notes:

1. NPID does not report on gestational diabetes.
2. NICE Diabetes in Pregnancy: Management of diabetes and its complications from pre-conception to the post natal period is available at the following link:

https://www.nice.org.uk/Guidance/NG3