Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take urgent steps with representatives of Clinical Commission Groups across England to tackle the discrimination faced by same-sex women couples when accessing fertility treatment on the NHS.

In England, decisions about local NHS fertility services are determined by clinical commissioning groups, taking account of National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) fertility guidelines. We expect local National Health Service bodies to commission fertility services in line with the NICE guidelines, so that there is equal access across England.

NICE fertility guidelines include provision for same sex female couples who have demonstrated their clinical infertility through six failed cycles of artificial insemination. These provisions are a way of achieving equivalence between opposite sex and same sex couples in establishing clinical infertility. NICE has begun a scoping process for the review of these guidelines.