Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department plans to take to improve the quality of data reporting on patients being admitted to inappropriate out of area placements as a result of no appropriate mental health services being available locally.

The Department works with NHS England and NHS Digital to provide governance for the development of the Mental Health Service Dataset (MHSDS) and improve data quality, including data for out of area placements.

NHS England and NHS Digital are working with trusts to ensure that the high submission rate of data for out of area placements continues and with NHS England and NHS Digital, we aim to improve the submission of data from private providers for the MHSDS.