Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether NHS England has put forward the inclusion of a maternal six-week postnatal check in negotiations on the General Medical Services contract; and what recent progress has been made in those negotiations.

The inclusion of a requirement to carry out a six-week postnatal check for all mothers in the general medical services contract would need to be negotiated and agreed, as part of the annual contract negotiations. We have asked for this issue to be considered in the contract negotiations for 2019/20. The details of those negotiations are not generally discussed until an agreement on the way forward has been reached.