Asked by: Jeremy Hunt (Conservative - Godalming and Ash)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to review the legal framework governing the care of people experiencing a mental health crisis in emergency departments.
Answered by Preet Kaur Gill
People who are acutely unwell and in a mental health crisis often do go to accident and emergency (A&E), and in some cases, a Mental Health Act assessment may be needed. In some cases, often due to distress or delays, the person may try to leave A&E before the assessment can be completed. In these instances, there can be confusion and often a lack of confidence about whether or what legal powers are available to health professionals to hold someone in A&E to keep them safe until the assessment can be completed.
We accept that there may be a need to provide greater clarity on the powers which are available to health professionals to keep people safe in a mental health crisis. We have committed to a consultation exploring the powers available to different professionals in different situations and settings, in particular but not limited to consulting on the operation of sections 135 and 136 powers under the Mental Health Act. The consultation will seek views on powers and joint working approaches to ensure health and social care professionals and police have the appropriate powers to act in order to protect people from harm to themselves and to others when in a mental health crisis.
As part of this, we will look to understand how the current legal framework in emergency departments is applied, and identify solutions to the problems raised. We will seek to provide further guidance on the existing legal framework and the handover protocol between health and police in the next revision of the Code of Practice.
Asked by: Jeremy Hunt (Conservative - Godalming and Ash)
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 potential merits of convening an emergency taskforce to address current medicine shortages.
Answered by Preet Kaur Gill
There are no plans to convene a taskforce on medicine shortages.
There are around 14,000 licensed medicines and the overwhelming majority are in good supply. Medicine supply chains are complex, global and highly regulated and there are a number of reasons why supply can be disrupted. Many of these are not specific to the United Kingdom and outside of Government control, including manufacturing difficulties, access to raw materials, sudden demand spikes or distribution and regulatory issues.
To help manage these risks, the Department and NHS England are committed to strengthening long term supply chain resilience and continually improving how we prevent, mitigate, and manage supply issues to protect patients from shortages.
The Department, working closely with NHS England, is taking forward a range of actions to further strengthen our ability to anticipate, mitigate, and manage shortages. As part of that work, we continue to engage with industry, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, and other colleagues across the supply chain. However, medicine shortages are a complex and global issue, and improving resilience requires action from all parts of the supply chain through a collaborative approach.
In August 2025, the Department published a policy paper, Managing a robust and resilient supply of medicines, which provides greater transparency of the supply chains we rely on, the actions we take to protect patients from medicines shortages when they occur, and the steps being taken to strengthen resilience. Later this year, we will publish an update on progress against those commitments and set out further actions to strengthen the resilience of our medicines supply chains. The paper is available at the following link: