Lord Markham, the Department of Health and Social Care, has provided the following answer to Lord Alton’s written parliamentary question (HL3080):
Question:
To ask His Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Kamall on 11 November (HL3361), how many human embryos were (1) deliberately destroyed, and (2) transferred to uteri to establish pregnancies, in each of the last 12 months for which figures are available; and how many human embryos have been (a) deliberately destroyed, and (b) transferred to uteri since such procedures were made legal. (HL3080)
Tabled on: 01 November 2022
Answer:
Lord Markham:
The following table shows the number of embryos discarded and transferred to uteri to establish pregnancies from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2020. The data is the latest information available on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority’s (HFEA) register database on 2 November 2022.
| Month | Embryos discarded | Embryos transferred |
| January 2020 | 11,005 | 4,716 |
| February 2020 | 15,743 | 6,978 |
| March 2020 | 14,432 | 5,228 |
| April 2020 | 2,870 | 283 |
| May 2020 | 1,822 | 85 |
| June 2020 | 6,894 | 3,110 |
| July 2020 | 13,458 | 6,185 |
| August 2020 | 14,578 | 6,228 |
| September 2020 | 14,238 | 6,283 |
| October 2020 | 14,609 | 6,812 |
| November 2020 | 16,880 | 6,988 |
| December 2020 | 10,020 | 4,868 |
| Total | 136,549 | 57,764 |
Source: HFEA
The following table shows the cumulative figures for the number of human embryos which have been discarded and transferred to uteri from 1 August 1991 to 31 December 2020. This includes additional validated data from previous years.
| Total number of embryos discarded | 3,242,868 |
| Total number of embryos transferred | 2,114,213 |
Source: HFEA
Date and time of answer: 14 Nov 2022 at 12:31.
