Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Markham on 30 January (HL1523), what assessment they have made of the impact of the fact that analysis of abortion complications data published by the Department comparing (1) Abortion Notification System data on complications arising from at home medical abortions, and (2) Hospital Episode Statistics inpatient admissions data on abortion complications does not include treatment in both inpatient and outpatient settings following discharge from the abortion service.

No assessment has been made, as high-quality data on outpatient treatment for abortion complications is not available. The analysis reviewed Abortion Notification System and Hospital Episode Statistics data on complications for all abortions. It did not specifically analyse data for complications following at home early medical abortions as Hospital Episode Statistics data on abortion complications does not record where the abortion was performed. Data completion on treatment of women as outpatients following a termination is considerably lower than the data for inpatient treatment. Including the incomplete outpatient data available in our analysis would have produced inaccurate results for this population.