Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of the common law defence of insanity; and what steps the Government plans to take to improve the law on criminal insanity.

The Government has considered the proposals in the Law Commission’s 2013 discussion paper.

Whilst we note the Law Commission’s proposals on the potential to update the law in this area, we have no current plans to bring forward legislative proposals in relation to this rarely used defence. However, we continue to keep this, and the wider and related law on unfitness to plead, under review.