Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government when they will respond to the report of the Joint Committee on the Draft Mental Health Bill (HL Paper 128), published on 19 January.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department is considering the Committee’s recommendations carefully and we will respond in due course.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what was the aggregate financial deficit for each integrated care board in England for the financial year 2022–23.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The final financial position for individual integrated care boards (ICBs) for the financial year 2022/23 will be confirmed in their year-end accounts which will be published in due course. The following table shows the latest projected year-end surplus/deficit position reported to the Department by NHS England and shows that 34 out of 42 ICBs are projected to end the financial year in a deficit position.
Integrated Care Board | 2022/23 Year End Surplus / (Deficit) (£m) |
South East London ICB | (1.0) |
North East London ICB | (9.2) |
North Central London ICB | (9.2) |
North West London ICB | (10.8) |
South West London ICB | 7.3 |
Herefordshire and Worcestershire ICB | 0.4 |
Birmingham and Solihull ICB | (100.5) |
Derby and Derbyshire ICB | 1.2 |
Lincolnshire ICB | (15.3) |
Leicester, Leicestershire, and Rutland ICB | (3.0) |
Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent ICB | (0.9) |
Shropshire, Telford, and Wrekin ICB | (25.3) |
Northamptonshire ICB | 5.8 |
Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICB | (1.6) |
Black Country ICB | (1.3) |
Coventry and Warwickshire ICB | 0.1 |
Mid and South Essex ICB | (27.8) |
Bedfordshire, Luton, and Milton Keynes ICB | (9.0) |
Suffolk and North East Essex ICB | (11.6) |
Hertfordshire and West Essex ICB | (7.4) |
Norfolk and Waveney ICB | 1.7 |
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB | 1.9 |
Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB | 20.6 |
Greater Manchester ICB | (69.8) |
Cheshire and Merseyside ICB | (13.6) |
South Yorkshire ICB | (5.8) |
North East and North Cumbria ICB | (22.8) |
Humber and North Yorkshire ICB | (16.9) |
West Yorkshire ICB | (19.2) |
Kent and Medway ICB | (1.4) |
Frimley ICB | (2.5) |
Sussex ICB | (16.2) |
Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICB | (16.3) |
Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West ICB | (15.5) |
Surrey Heartlands ICB | (43.2) |
Devon ICB | (12.1) |
Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire ICB | (62.0) |
Gloucestershire ICB | (10.0) |
Somerset ICB | (7.2) |
Cornwall and The Isles of Scilly ICB | (7.5) |
Bristol, North Somerset, and South Gloucestershire ICB | (7.1) |
Dorset ICB | 2.5 |
Source: NHS England
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what, if any, actions they intend to take to ensure that people suffering from mental health crises are not taken to a police custody suite.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We have announced the development of a new National Partnership Agreement between policing and health partners to ensure that the right agency responds to a mental health incident, removing police involvement earlier in the process where it’s not needed. This will support roll-out of the Right Care, Right Person approach, under which police will only engage in a mental health incident when there is a real and immediate risk to life or serious harm.
We have already achieved a significant reduction in the number of people taken to a police cell as a place of safety in recent years. In 2021/22 a police station was used as a place of safety 254 times in England out of a total of 36,594 Section 136 incidents. This represents less than 1% of incidents and is down from an estimated 8,667 times out of a total of 23,907 such incidents in 2011/12. The Draft Mental Health Bill contains provisions to remove police stations as a place of safety, so that people held under Section 136 will be in more appropriate health-based settings when in crisis or waiting for a place on a specialist ward. The Bill will be introduced when parliamentary time allows.
On 23 January 2023 we set out details on how £150 million of capital investment, first announced in the 2021 Spending Review, will be used to build mental health urgent and emergency care infrastructure. This includes £7 million for specialised mental health ambulances across the country to provide better care and support for people experiencing a mental health crisis.
We are also funding over 160 wider capital schemes including to provide and improve crisis cafes, crisis houses, mental health urgent care centres, health-based places of safety and broader improvements to crisis lines and emergency departments. This will mean care can be provided in more appropriate spaces for those in need, and will reduce pressure on wider parts of the system including accident and emergency.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government when they expect the report of the National Women’s Prisons Health and Social Care Review to be published.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England has advised that they are working with their partners to finalise the review and anticipate publication will be during the Summer of 2023.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that women released from prison (1) that have served a short sentence, and (2) that were not sentenced following remand, receive support from the Probation Service.
Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
One of the strategic aims of the Female Offender Strategy Delivery Plan 2022-25 (Jan 2023) is to protect the public through better outcomes for women on release. We will work to reduce reoffending rates for women leaving custody, focusing on what we know works: a home, a job and access to treatment for substance misuse.
Contracts for holistic rehabilitative services for women deliver bespoke and specialist support to sentenced women (including those that have served short sentences) after their release from prison. These services support women to meet their resettlement and rehabilitative needs, including: help to find accommodation; help to find education, training or employment; support to meet finance, benefit and debt-related needs; help to address dependency issues; support to improve relationships with family or significant others; and support for their emotional wellbeing and social inclusion. These services are available post-release to all women who are subject to Probation supervision and we continue to explore how we might support those released unsentenced.
All women in prison, including those on remand, are supported to meet their immediate resettlement needs and prepare for release by probation staff in prisons and maintain accommodation whilst in prison respectively. This includes sustaining accommodation on reception where possible, making referrals for accommodation and signposting women towards specialist advice for finance and debt support.
A Short Sentence Function is being implemented in all regions which will work with all people on probation with ten months or fewer to serve in prison. This will enable them to be fast tracked and offered direct engagement.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many days before a general election does an employee who has been selected as a parliamentary candidate have to resign from their job when they are working for (1) the NHS, (2) a local authority, and (3) the Civil Service.
Answered by Baroness Scott of Bybrook - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
NHS England employees are not subject to any requirements to resign due to parliamentary candidacy.
Health is devolved in Scotland and Wales – restrictions relating to parliamentary candidacy on employees of NHS Scotland and NHS Wales are a matter for the Scottish and Welsh governments.
A number of specified local authority positions are designated as ‘politically restricted’. Holders of such posts are required to resign before announcing their candidacy for Parliament. Individual local authorities have the flexibility to designate additional positions as ‘politically restricted’. Furthermore, they may also choose to include restrictions relating to parliamentary candidacy in their employment contracts with any of their employees.
Civil Servants are disqualified from holding the office of MP. Parliamentary candidates must confirm they are not disqualified from holding the office when completing their consent to nomination form, and therefore cannot be employed in the Civil Service at this point. Furthermore, Civil Servants who are categorised as belonging to politically restricted or politically intermediate groups must resign before being adopted as a prospective candidate by a political party.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many people serving a life sentence have absconded from an open prison and have then been convicted of (1) a serious further offence, or (2) any further offence, while unlawfully at large in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
We are unable to answer these questions within cost limits as the required detail is not within the prison NOMIS system. To obtain a robust estimate would require manually linking each incident to a prisoner, checking police records for all prisoners in scope, extracting and reporting on their criminal history and then linking to an additional database to identify seriousness of offence.
Data on absconds is published annually in the HMPPS annual digest. The latest version can be accessed via the following link: HMPPS Annual Digest, April 2021 to March 2022 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Public protection is our top priority. When a prisoner absconds, police are immediately notified and are responsible for locating the offender. The majority of absconders are quickly recaptured and returned to custody.
Those who abscond face serious consequences, including being returned to closed prison conditions where they may serve up to two additional years on conviction. Prisoners subject to parole decisions will likely face longer before they are released.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many people serving a sentence of Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) have absconded from an open prison and have been convicted of (1) a serious further offence, or (2) any further offence, while unlawfully at large in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
We are unable to answer these questions within cost limits as the required detail is not within the prison NOMIS system. To obtain a robust estimate would require manually linking each incident to a prisoner, checking police records for all prisoners in scope, extracting and reporting on their criminal history and then linking to an additional database to identify seriousness of offence.
Data on absconds is published annually in the HMPPS annual digest. The latest version can be accessed via the following link: HMPPS Annual Digest, April 2021 to March 2022 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Public protection is our top priority. When a prisoner absconds, police are immediately notified and are responsible for locating the offender. The majority of absconders are quickly recaptured and returned to custody.
Those who abscond face serious consequences, including being returned to closed prison conditions where they may serve up to two additional years on conviction. Prisoners subject to parole decisions will likely face longer before they are released.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government, with reference to the Mental Health Act 1983, what plans they have to increase the capacity of (1) places of safety, (2) section 136 suites, and (3) crisis care units, in each Integrated Care Board area in England.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
On 23 January 2023, we set out details on how £150 million of capital investment, first announced at the 2021 Spending Review, will be used to improve mental health urgent and emergency care infrastructure. This includes funding for 150 schemes across the country on a fair shares basis, reaching all 42 integrated care boards.
This will support the building and expanding of capacity for health-based places of safety, section 136 suites and mental health assessment, care and treatment units. It will also support crisis cafes, crisis houses and broader improvements to crisis lines and accident and emergency departments, as well as the procurement of up to 100 specialised mental health ambulances over the next two years. This will provide care in more appropriate spaces for those experiencing a mental health crisis and will reduce pressure on wider parts of the healthcare system.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many people serving a sentence of Imprisonment for Public Protection had their first parole hearing (1) on, or (2) after, tariff expiry and were either (a) directed, or (b) not directed, for release, following their hearing in each year since 2009.
Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
By law any prisoner serving an Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence who has completed the minimum term (tariff) set by the Court at the point of sentence is eligible to be considered for release. However, the Parole Board will direct the prisoner’s release where it concludes that it is no longer necessary on the grounds of public protection for the prisoner to remain confined.
The Secretary of State must refer a prisoner’s case to the Parole Board at the end of their minimum tariff period and, if release is not directed, at least every two years thereafter. The Parole Board is responsible for the listing of cases referred to it. Ministers or officials may not intervene in this process.
The total number of prisoners serving an IPP sentence that had their first parole hearing after 2009 and were either (a) directed for release, or (b) not directed for release, following the hearing, is shown in the following table:
Hearing/Outcome Year | Release | Not directed for Release (including open condition decisions) |
2009 | (Note 3 below refers) | |
2010 | 39 | 1,033 |
2011 | 90 | 1,207 |
2012 | 69 | 658 |
2013 | 70 | 618 |
2014 | 49 | 344 |
2015 | 59 | 366 |
2016 | 64 | 246 |
2017 | 54 | 205 |
2018 | 48 | 127 |
2019 | 29 | 74 |
2020 | 18 | 46 |
2021 | 14 | 30 |
Notes: