asked the Secretary of State for Social Services to what extent abortion statistics may be broken down by the postal areas of the women upon whom the abortions were performed.

The post codes of the addresses of the women upon whom abortions are performed are shown on the notification forms. These post codes are used to generate local authority and district health authority area codes which are held on the computer file from which abortion statistics are produced. For reasons of maintaining confidentiality, computer files containing post coded data on abortions are not retained.Statistics are released only for DHA of usual residence, or for other areas which cover, directly or indirectly, populations exceeding 80,000 persons.