Asked by: Jenny Riddell-Carpenter (Labour - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure continuity of mental health care for people leaving prison.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Chief Medical Officer’s report on the health of people in prison, on probation and in the secure National Health Service estate in England was published on 6 November 2025 and we are carefully considering its findings and recommendations.
The Department is committed to working with health and justice partners to support the continuity of mental health care for people leaving prison. This includes supporting prison leavers who have engaged in treatment while in custody to continue to access services in the community.
One service available is RECONNECT, which provides a care after custody service designed to improve the continuity of care for people leaving prison or an immigration removal centre who have an identified health need. The service works with individuals before release to support their transition to community-based services, helping to safeguard health gains made while in custody.
Asked by: Jenny Riddell-Carpenter (Labour - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of mental health provision for people in prisons.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Chief Medical Officer’s report on the health of people in prison, on probation and in the secure National Health Service estate in England was published on 6 November 2025 and we are carefully considering its findings and recommendations.
Healthcare services in the prison estate are commissioned by NHS England. All prison healthcare providers are commissioned and contracted to use National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines.
Every prison in England has onsite healthcare teams providing primary care, mental health, dentistry, and substance misuse services. As part of the formal prisoner induction process, all prisoners undergo health screening that incorporates a mental health assessment. The secondary care mental health assessment is carried out by a mental health professional. Routine assessments are carried out within five working days. Where an individual is in a state of mental health crisis, presents with rapidly escalating needs, or is at risk of immediate harm to themselves or others, an urgent assessment should be undertaken within 48 hours.
NHS England commissions health needs assessments across the prison estate to determine the needs of the prison population and is updating all 19 health and justice service specifications by March 2026 to ensure it continues to meet those needs while assessing opportunities to improve healthcare in prisons.
Asked by: Jenny Riddell-Carpenter (Labour - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve the identification of mental health needs among people entering the criminal justice system.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We are committed to diverting offenders with mental health, substance misuse, and other vulnerabilities away from prison or out of the criminal justice system altogether, where appropriate.
NHS Liaison and Diversion services identify people who have mental health, learning disability, substance misuse or other vulnerabilities when they first come into contact with the criminal justice system as suspects, defendants or offenders.
Mental health screening also takes place when someone is detained in prison, as set out in the National Health Service service specification for health care in prisons. As part of the formal prisoner induction process, all prisoners must undergo health screening that incorporates a mental health assessment. This is an essential standard under the specification.
Asked by: Jenny Riddell-Carpenter (Labour - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that local authorities are able to act swiftly where there is evidence of illegal tobacco or vaping products being sold on high streets.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Tobacco and Vapes Bill will strengthen enforcement and crack down on rogue retailers selling illegal tobacco and vaping products. The bill enables ministers in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland to introduce a licensing scheme for the retail sale of tobacco, vapes, and nicotine products, and enables the introduction of a new registration system for tobacco, vape, and nicotine products that are sold on the United Kingdom’s market. This will help ensure products are compliant with product safety and standards requirements and enable Trading Standards to remove non-compliant products from the market quickly and efficiently.
Alongside the bill, the Government has announced £10 million of new funding in 2025/26 to Trading Standards, to support the enforcement of illicit and underage tobacco and vape sales in England, and the implementation of the measures in the bill. This funding is being used to boost the Trading Standards workforce by recruiting 94 new apprentices. This will provide greater workforce capacity, enabling swifter enforcement action against illicit activity.
Asked by: Jenny Riddell-Carpenter (Labour - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the impact of underage access to vape products on young people’s health.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The health advice is clear, that whilst vapes can be an effective quit aid for adult smokers, children and young people should never vape.
The leading health risk to children and young people from vaping is nicotine addiction, and evidence suggests that young people may be more susceptible to the effects of nicotine. There are also potential health risks associated with the other ingredients in vapes which when overheated may produce toxic compounds. Vaping is associated with health problems such as asthma, coughing, and poor mental health, and is linked to other risky behaviours, such as drug use. Evidence on the longer-term health effects of vaping are still emerging.
To address this, the Government is progressing the Tobacco and Vapes Bill through Parliament, which includes a package of measures that will protect young people from the known and emerging harms of nicotine and vaping products. To better understand the longer-term effects of vaping on young people, the Government has commissioned a significant package of research including a £62 million research project funded by UK Research and Innovation.
Asked by: Jenny Riddell-Carpenter (Labour - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what specialist mental health support is available to children experiencing parental alienation.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The 10-Year Health Plan sets out ambitious plans to boost mental health support across the country and deliver timely, efficient care for children and young people, including children affected by parental alienation.
As prioritised in our Medium-Term Planning Framework, we are taking action to reduce the longest waits for specialist mental health support, tackling regional disparities, and expanding access, thereby making services more productive so children and young people spend less time waiting for the treatment they need.
We are also accelerating the rollout of Mental Health Support Teams in schools and colleges to reach full national coverage by 2029. As part of this, we are investing an additional £13 million to pilot enhanced training for staff so that they can offer more effective support to young people with complex needs, such as trauma, neurodivergence, and disordered eating.
Asked by: Jenny Riddell-Carpenter (Labour - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what funding his Department has allocated to mental health services for people in the criminal justice system in the current financial year and the previous five financial years; and how that funding has been distributed in (a) England and (b) Suffolk and Norfolk.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The information requested is not held centrally. NHS England commissions healthcare services in every prison in England, and funding for mental health services for individuals within the criminal justice system is embedded within wider service contracts. These include services such as RECONNECT and Liaison and Diversion, and the specific expenditure on mental health within these services is not collected.
Asked by: Jenny Riddell-Carpenter (Labour - Suffolk Coastal)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure timely access to mental health support for children and parents affected by family breakdown and parental alienation.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The 10-Year Health Plan sets out ambitious plans to boost mental health support across the country, including for children and parents affected by family breakdown and parental alienation. This includes transforming mental health services into 24/7 neighbourhood mental health centres, improving assertive outreach, expanding talking therapies, and giving patients better access to 24/7 support directly through the NHS App.
The 10-Year Health Plan will build on the work that has already begun to bring down waiting lists. This includes providing mental health support for almost one million more young people in school this year and an extra £688 million in Government funding this year to transform mental health services, specifically to hire more staff, deliver more early interventions, and get waiting lists down.
This plan sets out how we will work with schools and colleges to better identify and meet children's mental health needs by continuing to roll out mental health support teams in schools and colleges, to reach full national coverage by 2029.
We are also expanding NHS Talking Therapies so that 915,000 people complete a course of treatment by March 2029, with improved effectiveness and quality of services. We will also expand Individual Placement and Support for severe mental illness so that 73,500 people receive access by March 2028.