Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to promote alcohol counselling to prevent alcohol-related crime.

A key step in helping to prevent alcohol-related crime is the Liaison and Diversion (L&D) programme. This programme is a cross government initiative, led by NHS England and has developed the first national model for delivering liaison and diversion services to people in contact with the criminal justice system. 25 trial sites have been commissioned by NHS England.

The programme aims to identify, assess and refer people into appropriate treatment and support services at their first point of contact with the criminal justice system. The exact approach may vary in different areas, for instance some L&D services may directly provide brief counselling-type interventions to individuals, but others may refer into existing alcohol treatment and advice services.

Another key piece of work is a recent Public Health England pilot of alcohol brief interventions in North West England where prisoners whose offending is linked to alcohol misuse were offered brief interventions pre-release and then by their offender manager after release. The pilot is due to report later this year.

Government is keen to promote recovery from alcohol problems, and this year the Department added a new condition to the ring-fenced public health grant to local authorities, stating that they should have regard to the need to improve the take up of, and outcomes from, their alcohol and drug misuse treatment services.