Luciana Berger – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2015-12-04.
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 Mental Health Act 1983; and how many prisoners have waited for more than 14 days for such a transfer in each of the last five years.
Ben Gummer
NHS England has revised good practice guidance on transferring adult prisoners to secure hospitals under sections 47 and 48 of the Mental Health Act 1983. This guidance includes the expectation that a transfer will take place within 14 days, when the need for hospital admission is urgent, and that longer transfer periods should be reported to NHS commissioners, so that steps can be taken to improve. The guidance will be published shortly.
Between April to September 2015, 343 prisoners waited more than 14 days for a transfer. Data on prisoner transfer waiting times was not held centrally prior to April 2015. Since then, NHS England has collected data from Health and Justice Indicators of Performance (HJIPs) at a national level.
HJIPs include data on waiting times for transfers between prisons and secure hospitals in England since April 2015 and available information is shown in the attached table, Health & Justice Indicators of Performance – Mental Health Secure Assessment and Transfer. NHS England intends to publish future HJIP data online from April 2016.
