Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether the psychiatric reports presented before the jury in the trail of Brian Healless were used in the decision to transfer him to a mental hospital from prison.

I wrote to the Honourable Member on 1 June in which I set out, in detail, why Mr Healless was transferred from a prison to hospital and the operation of that transfer process, prior to receiving this question.

I can confirm that the psychiatric reports submitted to the Preston Crown Court during the course of Brian Healless’s trial for murder were not submitted as part of the required medical recommendations for his subsequent transfer from a prison to a hospital under Section 47 of the Mental Health Act 1983 (the 1983 Act).

The Secretary of State would not ordinarily accept the use of psychiatric reports submitted to a court during the course of a criminal trial for the purposes of determining whether the statutory criteria for the transfer of a prisoner to hospital are met. Such reports do address similar criteria regarding the presence of a mental disorder and a potential need for an offender to be treated in a hospital. However, the primary aim of such a report is to assist a court in determining the appropriate sentence for a mentally-disordered offender, not the necessity for transferring a serving prisoner to hospital under the 1983 Act.