Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many civil servants in his Department are working on the (a) findings and (b) implementation of recommendations from the 2023 Learning from Lives and Deaths – People with a Learning Disability and Autistic People annual report.

We recognise that the Learning from Lives and Deaths (LeDeR) programme as a crucial source of evidence that helps to identify the key improvements needed to tackle health disparities and to prevent the avoidable deaths of people with a learning disability and autistic people. There is no fixed number of people working on LeDeR within the Department, as the programme is run by NHS England, and the Department’s involvement varies depending on the programme’s requirements and findings from each year’s report.

Alongside the forthcoming publication of the next LeDeR report, NHS England will publish an Action from Learning report. This highlights the work across the country by integrated care boards to improve services for people with a learning disability and autism. The learning disability and autism programme within NHS England is responsible for commissioning the LeDeR report and continues to work with other NHS England programmes to ensure that they consider the needs of people with a learning disability and autistic people when looking at pathways of care and needs assessments.