Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

As we made clear in the Green Paper, we will, with the Department of Health, have invested £50 million by 2014 in establishing a liaison and diversion service, both in the police stations and in courts, to ensure that people who should more appropriately be treated in the health service do not go to prison. Of course prisons and secure mental hospitals will remain the appropriate place for offenders who have committed serious offences and pose a risk to the public. Prison health services will continue to provide care and treatment for the majority of prisoners with mental illness, with the additional support of specialist mental health inreach teams.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

T7. On the planned national diversion service, will the Minister tell the House who will provide the mental health assessments in police stations and courts that will be necessary for that service to work? Have the necessary provisions to provide that service been included in the budget?

[Mr Blunt]

Those assessments are a matter of health rather than justice, so the Department of Health is leading on establishing the liaison for diversion services.