Luciana Berger – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-09-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to ensure the efficient and timely transfer of prisoners to hospitals under the provisions of the Mental Health Act 1983; and how many prisoners have waited for more than 14 days for such a transfer in each quarter since April 2015.

Nicola Blackwood

Department of Health guidance was published in 2011 on best practice to achieve urgent transfers within 14 days. NHS England continues to work with prison healthcare and secure mental health providers to improve processes so that this can be achieved.

NHS England has provided information on transfers as detailed below.

Note: the numbers above are reported transfers in the time period, an individual prisoner may be represented in more than one time period

Data for this indicator has improved since data collection began in April 2015. NHS England have since improved the data collection and quality under the Health and Justice Indicators of Performance and the information above now represents data from all prisons.

NHS England intends to publish data collected through Health and Justice Indicators of Performance since April 2016 in future, but a firm date for publication is not yet available.