Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Earl Howe on 23 January 2013 (HL4388), whether the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority still considers that multiple pregnancy poses "the single greatest health risk associated with fertility treatment"; what records they hold on foetal reduction in the first trimester and early in the second trimester; what assessment they have made of the impact of such procedures on the incidence of complications otherwise associated with multiple pregnancy; and what was the average mortality rate of (1) singleton, (2) twin, and (3) triplet, pregnancies in the United Kingdom over each year of the past decade for which records are available.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has advised that it and all of the relevant professional bodies support the One at a time initiative, which aims to reduce the incidence of multiple births following in-vitro fertilisation (IVF). The consensus statement signed in 2011 states that “Multiple births is the single biggest risk to the health and welfare of children born following fertility treatment”:

www.oneatatime.org.uk/images/2011-05_Multiple_Births_Consensus_Statement_-_FINAL.pdf

The HFEA holds records on foetal reductions carried out in the first trimester and early in the second trimester following each cycle of IVF or donor insemination in the UK.

When developing its policy on multiple births the HFEA commissioned an Expert Group on Multiple Births after IVF, which concluded that the prevention of multiple pregnancies through single embryo transfer should be preferred to multifetal pregnancy reduction.

Information on average mortality rates for singleton, twin and triplet pregnancies is not collected centrally. The information that is available is shown in the following table.