Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department has taken to promote breastfeeding.

Public Health England (PHE) is committed to improving breastfeeding rates across England and has identified breastfeeding as a key priority within our maternity and child health programmes.

PHE works nationally to support local authorities (LAs) to improve breastfeeding rates. PHE, in partnership with the United Nations International Childrens’ Emergency Fund (UNICEF), published an infant feeding commissioning toolkit to support the commissioning of interventions to improve breastfeeding rates, available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/infant-feeding-commissioning-services

LAs and their partners are encouraged to provide a comprehensive universal service with access to specialist support when needed. The PHE breastfeeding fingertips profiles allow local areas to see performance against a range of indicators supporting them to plan and review services and local population needs. More information is available at the following link:

https://fingertips.phe.org.uk

PHE supports action to improve breastfeeding rates through evidence to provide guidance to professionals, and address health inequalities. The guidance includes six high impact areas for early years aimed at health visitors includes promotion of breastfeeding and is available at the following link:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/563921/Early_years_high_impact_area3_breastfeeding.pdf