Question to the Northern Ireland Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, what assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of British Pregnancy Advisory Service provision in meeting the requirement for the funding of a Central Access Service in the direction given on 22 July 2021.

I am extremely grateful to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service for stepping in at a crucial moment to provide women and girls with a temporary interim service. However, I am disappointed it had to get to that stage.

I will continue to monitor the new services provided by BPAS and I am determined that women and girls receive at least the same level of service as under the previous provider while this interim service is in place. I recognise that this is not a permanent solution, and that more needs to be done. It is for this reason that in July, I issued a Direction to the Department of Health and First and deputy First Minister to commission and make abortion services available by no later than 31 March 2022.

The Government recognises the importance of consulting with experts, counselling and other support services to support women and girls in accessing services and making individual decisions on these matters. I would like to put on record my thanks to Informing Choices NI for providing a central access point from April 2020 to September 2021, until they were forced to withdraw some services as a direct result of inaction from the Department of Health.

The Northern Ireland Office will continue to work closely with the Department of Health in taking forward implementation of this important devolved issue.