Ed Humpherson to Lord Moylan: Abortion Statistics for England and Wales (20 February 2025)

Dear Lord Moylan

Thank you for your letter of 20 January regarding abortion statistics for England and Wales produced by the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC). Given the length of time since our assessment of these statistics in 2012, and several data developments which DHSC is planning, we have agreed with DHSC that a compliance check of the statistics would be beneficial. We plan to carry out this review in the first quarter of 2026/27, giving DHSC time to undertake its planned developments. These include supporting data providers to move to DHSC’s digital submission system and working with digital experts and system users to improve the design of the Abortion Notification System.

We have also considered the statistics about complications currently published by DHSC. We welcome the research which DHSC published in 2023 exploring an alternative data source for understanding complications from abortions. We understand that DHSC does not currently have plans to repeat this analysis and that it has not received strong user demand for this information. While there are limitations associated with using abortion notification forms to understand complications, we consider that these are clearly explained by DHSC. There are also strengths associated with this data source, for example the data covers England and Wales, includes complications which do not require hospitalisation and provides a denominator for calculating complication rates. Given the resource constraints facing analytical teams at DHSC, we understand DHSC’s decision not to routinely publish this information at this time. We encourage them to continue to engage with users to ensure their portfolio of statistics best meet user needs within their constrained resources.

Thank you for taking the time to write to me on this important issue. I will be happy to let you know once our compliance check has been concluded.

Yours sincerely

Ed Humpherson
Director General for OSR

Ed Humpherson to Lord Moylan: Abortion Statistics for England and Wales (20 February 2025)

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