Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the remarks by Baroness Merron on 20 October (HL Deb col 480), in what way is the Mental Health Act "very significant" in supporting people with learning disabilities to access NHS services.

The Government’s 10-Year Health Plan sets out to tackle health inequalities and people with disabilities are a priority for care from a neighbourhood team with more holistic, on-going support. Ahead of this, action is underway to improve access and support through staff training, proactive health checks and plans, and the Mental Health Act reforms.

The Government knows that people with a learning disability and autistic people have poorer health outcomes than the general population, including, on average, dying younger. They continue to experience disparities in the quality of care they receive, which may include barriers to accessing the right support.

The Government is rolling out the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism to the health and adult social care workforce to ensure staff have the right knowledge and skills to provide safe, informed care. Oliver’s Training is the Government’s preferred package for providers registered with the Care Quality Commission to meet the statutory training requirement under the Health and Care Act 2022. Over three million people have completed the e-learning package, the first part of this training, and more than 2,700 people have been trained to deliver the interactive second part nationwide.

Annual health checks for people with a learning disability are a crucial way to identify undetected conditions early and ensure the appropriateness of ongoing treatments. NHS England is working with people with lived experience, clinical professionals, and commissioners to produce a quality framework to ensure that these vital checks are high-quality. NHS England is also taking forward a range of work to improve the quality of the services accessed by people with a learning disability, including rollout of the Reasonable Adjustment Digital Flag across health and care services which enables health and publicly funded care professionals to record, share, and view details of the reasonable adjustments which individuals need to support their care and treatment.

The number of people with a learning disability and autistic people in mental health hospitals is unacceptable, and there are still too many people being detained who could be supported to live well in their communities. The Mental Health Bill currently before Parliament limits the scope of the ability to detain people with a learning disability and autistic people so that they can only be detained under Part 2, section 3 if they have a co-occurring mental disorder that requires hospital treatment. It also introduces measures to improve community support, including putting Care (Education) and Treatment Reviews and Dynamic Support Registers on a statutory footing, and placing certain duties on integrated care boards and local authorities when exercising existing commissioning duties.