Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what mitigating actions are in place for prison buildings when the presence of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete is detected.
Answered by Lord Bellamy
Departments have been asked to report on the current picture of suspected and confirmed Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC) in their estates as soon as possible. This will be updated on a regular basis as new buildings are identified and surveying and remediation are carried out. The Government published lists of education settings confirmed as having RAAC on Wednesday 6 September and committed to providing further updates.
The potential mitigating actions for prison buildings will be to monitor them, prop them up or replace them, in line with Institute of Structural Engineers guidance.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what was the aggregate financial surplus or deficit for each integrated care board in England at the end of the first quarter of the 2023–24 financial year; and what was the percentage change from the surplus or deficit at the beginning of the 2023–24 financial year.
Answered by Lord Markham
At the beginning of each financial year, all integrated care boards (ICBs) will agree a plan for the year with NHS England that includes expected expenditure against budgets for each month. At the end of the first quarter, several ICBs have reported an overspend against the agreed plan for that quarter. A table of the full list of these ICBs is attached.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government when they will respond to the report of the Joint Committee on the Draft Mental Health Bill (HL Paper 128), published on 19 January.
Answered by Lord Markham
The Department is considering the Committee’s recommendations carefully and we will respond in due course.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what was the aggregate financial deficit for each integrated care board in England for the financial year 2022–23.
Answered by Lord Markham
The final financial position for individual integrated care boards (ICBs) for the financial year 2022/23 will be confirmed in their year-end accounts which will be published in due course. The following table shows the latest projected year-end surplus/deficit position reported to the Department by NHS England and shows that 34 out of 42 ICBs are projected to end the financial year in a deficit position.
Integrated Care Board | 2022/23 Year End Surplus / (Deficit) (£m) |
South East London ICB | (1.0) |
North East London ICB | (9.2) |
North Central London ICB | (9.2) |
North West London ICB | (10.8) |
South West London ICB | 7.3 |
Herefordshire and Worcestershire ICB | 0.4 |
Birmingham and Solihull ICB | (100.5) |
Derby and Derbyshire ICB | 1.2 |
Lincolnshire ICB | (15.3) |
Leicester, Leicestershire, and Rutland ICB | (3.0) |
Staffordshire and Stoke on Trent ICB | (0.9) |
Shropshire, Telford, and Wrekin ICB | (25.3) |
Northamptonshire ICB | 5.8 |
Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICB | (1.6) |
Black Country ICB | (1.3) |
Coventry and Warwickshire ICB | 0.1 |
Mid and South Essex ICB | (27.8) |
Bedfordshire, Luton, and Milton Keynes ICB | (9.0) |
Suffolk and North East Essex ICB | (11.6) |
Hertfordshire and West Essex ICB | (7.4) |
Norfolk and Waveney ICB | 1.7 |
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB | 1.9 |
Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB | 20.6 |
Greater Manchester ICB | (69.8) |
Cheshire and Merseyside ICB | (13.6) |
South Yorkshire ICB | (5.8) |
North East and North Cumbria ICB | (22.8) |
Humber and North Yorkshire ICB | (16.9) |
West Yorkshire ICB | (19.2) |
Kent and Medway ICB | (1.4) |
Frimley ICB | (2.5) |
Sussex ICB | (16.2) |
Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICB | (16.3) |
Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West ICB | (15.5) |
Surrey Heartlands ICB | (43.2) |
Devon ICB | (12.1) |
Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire ICB | (62.0) |
Gloucestershire ICB | (10.0) |
Somerset ICB | (7.2) |
Cornwall and The Isles of Scilly ICB | (7.5) |
Bristol, North Somerset, and South Gloucestershire ICB | (7.1) |
Dorset ICB | 2.5 |
Source: NHS England
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what, if any, actions they intend to take to ensure that people suffering from mental health crises are not taken to a police custody suite.
Answered by Lord Markham
We have announced the development of a new National Partnership Agreement between policing and health partners to ensure that the right agency responds to a mental health incident, removing police involvement earlier in the process where it’s not needed. This will support roll-out of the Right Care, Right Person approach, under which police will only engage in a mental health incident when there is a real and immediate risk to life or serious harm.
We have already achieved a significant reduction in the number of people taken to a police cell as a place of safety in recent years. In 2021/22 a police station was used as a place of safety 254 times in England out of a total of 36,594 Section 136 incidents. This represents less than 1% of incidents and is down from an estimated 8,667 times out of a total of 23,907 such incidents in 2011/12. The Draft Mental Health Bill contains provisions to remove police stations as a place of safety, so that people held under Section 136 will be in more appropriate health-based settings when in crisis or waiting for a place on a specialist ward. The Bill will be introduced when parliamentary time allows.
On 23 January 2023 we set out details on how £150 million of capital investment, first announced in the 2021 Spending Review, will be used to build mental health urgent and emergency care infrastructure. This includes £7 million for specialised mental health ambulances across the country to provide better care and support for people experiencing a mental health crisis.
We are also funding over 160 wider capital schemes including to provide and improve crisis cafes, crisis houses, mental health urgent care centres, health-based places of safety and broader improvements to crisis lines and emergency departments. This will mean care can be provided in more appropriate spaces for those in need, and will reduce pressure on wider parts of the system including accident and emergency.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government when they expect the report of the National Women’s Prisons Health and Social Care Review to be published.
Answered by Lord Markham
NHS England has advised that they are working with their partners to finalise the review and anticipate publication will be during the Summer of 2023.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that women released from prison (1) that have served a short sentence, and (2) that were not sentenced following remand, receive support from the Probation Service.
Answered by Lord Bellamy
One of the strategic aims of the Female Offender Strategy Delivery Plan 2022-25 (Jan 2023) is to protect the public through better outcomes for women on release. We will work to reduce reoffending rates for women leaving custody, focusing on what we know works: a home, a job and access to treatment for substance misuse.
Contracts for holistic rehabilitative services for women deliver bespoke and specialist support to sentenced women (including those that have served short sentences) after their release from prison. These services support women to meet their resettlement and rehabilitative needs, including: help to find accommodation; help to find education, training or employment; support to meet finance, benefit and debt-related needs; help to address dependency issues; support to improve relationships with family or significant others; and support for their emotional wellbeing and social inclusion. These services are available post-release to all women who are subject to Probation supervision and we continue to explore how we might support those released unsentenced.
All women in prison, including those on remand, are supported to meet their immediate resettlement needs and prepare for release by probation staff in prisons and maintain accommodation whilst in prison respectively. This includes sustaining accommodation on reception where possible, making referrals for accommodation and signposting women towards specialist advice for finance and debt support.
A Short Sentence Function is being implemented in all regions which will work with all people on probation with ten months or fewer to serve in prison. This will enable them to be fast tracked and offered direct engagement.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many days before a general election does an employee who has been selected as a parliamentary candidate have to resign from their job when they are working for (1) the NHS, (2) a local authority, and (3) the Civil Service.
Answered by Baroness Scott of Bybrook - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
NHS England employees are not subject to any requirements to resign due to parliamentary candidacy.
Health is devolved in Scotland and Wales – restrictions relating to parliamentary candidacy on employees of NHS Scotland and NHS Wales are a matter for the Scottish and Welsh governments.
A number of specified local authority positions are designated as ‘politically restricted’. Holders of such posts are required to resign before announcing their candidacy for Parliament. Individual local authorities have the flexibility to designate additional positions as ‘politically restricted’. Furthermore, they may also choose to include restrictions relating to parliamentary candidacy in their employment contracts with any of their employees.
Civil Servants are disqualified from holding the office of MP. Parliamentary candidates must confirm they are not disqualified from holding the office when completing their consent to nomination form, and therefore cannot be employed in the Civil Service at this point. Furthermore, Civil Servants who are categorised as belonging to politically restricted or politically intermediate groups must resign before being adopted as a prospective candidate by a political party.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many people serving a life sentence have absconded from an open prison and have then been convicted of (1) a serious further offence, or (2) any further offence, while unlawfully at large in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Lord Bellamy
We are unable to answer these questions within cost limits as the required detail is not within the prison NOMIS system. To obtain a robust estimate would require manually linking each incident to a prisoner, checking police records for all prisoners in scope, extracting and reporting on their criminal history and then linking to an additional database to identify seriousness of offence.
Data on absconds is published annually in the HMPPS annual digest. The latest version can be accessed via the following link: HMPPS Annual Digest, April 2021 to March 2022 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Public protection is our top priority. When a prisoner absconds, police are immediately notified and are responsible for locating the offender. The majority of absconders are quickly recaptured and returned to custody.
Those who abscond face serious consequences, including being returned to closed prison conditions where they may serve up to two additional years on conviction. Prisoners subject to parole decisions will likely face longer before they are released.
Asked by: Lord Bradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many people serving a sentence of Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) have absconded from an open prison and have been convicted of (1) a serious further offence, or (2) any further offence, while unlawfully at large in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Lord Bellamy
We are unable to answer these questions within cost limits as the required detail is not within the prison NOMIS system. To obtain a robust estimate would require manually linking each incident to a prisoner, checking police records for all prisoners in scope, extracting and reporting on their criminal history and then linking to an additional database to identify seriousness of offence.
Data on absconds is published annually in the HMPPS annual digest. The latest version can be accessed via the following link: HMPPS Annual Digest, April 2021 to March 2022 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Public protection is our top priority. When a prisoner absconds, police are immediately notified and are responsible for locating the offender. The majority of absconders are quickly recaptured and returned to custody.
Those who abscond face serious consequences, including being returned to closed prison conditions where they may serve up to two additional years on conviction. Prisoners subject to parole decisions will likely face longer before they are released.