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 a maternal six-week postnatal check is included in the General Medical Services contract; and what funding he plans to allocate for the provision of those checks.

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.