Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 21 November 2022 to Question 87887 on Mental Health Services: Standards, what steps he is taking to help tackle (a) failures identified in Care Quality Commission reports and (b) the reoccurrence of these failures.

Mental health providers are expected to formulate an action plan to meet any shortfalls in standards in Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspections reports and any enforcement action, working in partnership with local integrated care boards, NHS England and the CQC. The CQC will reinspect the provider, often within six months of a report being published, to check if the provider has made the required improvements.

The CQC shares information of concern with relevant stakeholders to allow them to support the provider to improve and monitors emerging issues and trends evidenced across its inspection reports. It raises these issues for national consideration and action through its annual publications such as State of Care and the Mental Health Act monitoring report, as well as its independent voice publications.

Mental health patients and their families deserve and expect the highest standards of care and it is vitally important we learn from such failures to improve care across the National Service Health and protect patients in the future. Ministers are considering options to address the issues in mental health inpatient care identified recently at a number of providers. We will update on this in due course.