Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve the quality of hospital services for 18-25 year olds with severe mental health issues.

NHS England and NHS Improvement have responsibility for quality of NHS services, including mental health, and the Care Quality Commission inspects the quality of health services through a robust inspection framework to ensure quality standards are maintained.

Under the NHS Long Term Plan (2019), we will focus on improving the quality of inpatient care across the National Health Service, including for 18-25 year olds with severe mental health issues. The NHS Mental Health Implementation Plan 2019/20 – 2023/24 (2019) highlighted that all local areas are required to have a workplan and trajectories in place to reduce out of area placements, which include working to improve local system/bed capacity management and unwarranted variation in length of stay where this exists.