Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent assessment he has made of trends in the proportion of people in prisons in England and Wales who have been placed into custody as a place of safety as a result of mental health conditions during the covid-19 outbreak.

This Government has committed to remove prison as a place of safety under the Mental Health Act. Instances of prison being used as a place of safety are not recorded centrally; consequently there is no one data source that determines the scale of use. Work is underway to explore the use of prison as a place of safety; whether it is used solely in respect of concerns over mental health, or in conjunction with other factors such as the offending history of the individual; how this information is recorded; and the extent to which it can be quantified.