Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many patient safety cases involving a multiple pregnancy were reported to the (a) National Patient Safety Agency and (b) NHS Commissioning Board Special Health Authority in each of the last 10 years.

The information requested is provided in the following table:

* Note 2014 data are incomplete

The table illustrates the number of incidents reported to the National Reporting and Learning System where the incident report contained keywords indicating multiple pregnancies, from 1 January 2005 to 30 September 2014, by degree of harm reported as caused by the incident. It is important to note that the inclusion of these keywords may not always indicate the incident directly affected a multiple pregnancy; for example, reference in the incident report may be made to previous pregnancies. The harm reported may relate to the mother or to one or more foetuses/infants.

The overall number of patient safety incidents reported to the National Reporting and Learning System has increased every year since its inception. Increasing numbers of reported patient safety incidents are considered to be a sign of an improving patient safety culture and increases in the number of incident reports should not be interpreted as deterioration in the safety of patients.