Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps to ensure that Group B Streptococcus-specific enriched culture medium testing is available in hospital laboratories.

Enriched culture medium testing is used in National Health Service laboratories. Current clinical practice is that if a routine urine test in pregnancy indicates a bacterial infection, microbiology techniques, such as enriched culture medium plates, should be used to identify the bacteria.