Acquired Brain Injury Action Plan

Apsana Begum Excerpts

Thursday 4th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. I thank the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) for securing this debate and for the work he is doing as chair of the APPG for acquired brain injury; I worked with his predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda and Ogmore (Chris Bryant), on these issues.

I want to speak about the case of Imran Douglas, the deceased son of my constituent Amy, to illustrate why an acquired brain injury strategy and action plan should no longer be a matter of if but when. Imran was born in 1995 and suffered a brain injury as a result of a road accident when he was just 17. He was in a coma, and when he woke up he was found to have significant personality changes. Imran was taken into care, having never previously needed psychiatric assessments or had any run-ins with the authorities or the criminal justice system.

While in care, Imran committed a horrific act of murder—something which his mother, my constituent, has always maintained was a brutal and undeserved attack for which Imran was responsible—of an elderly person who was completely innocent. Imran was then transferred to hospital, and in 2013 pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Imran was the first 18-year-old to be sent to Belmarsh prison following his sentencing. He lasted less than a week, because he killed himself.

A subsequent inquest into Imran’s death found a lack of planning and a failure of care by some of those responsible for his welfare while he was in custody, who were aware of Imran’s condition. It spoke to

“a systemic lack of communication between, and within, almost all the agencies involved most notably within Feltham Young Offenders Institution.”

In other words, he should not have been transferred to Belmarsh prison. Since his suicide, Imran’s mother Amy and his father Masum have been fighting for a serious case review. They have been fighting for several years but have never been granted one.

Over the years, Imran’s parents have worked with the Acquired Brain Injury Forum and various other campaign groups for changes in the law to identify brain injury at much earlier stages, and ensure that people in this country have the right to support in that regard. I pay tribute to them for their efforts over the years to deal with the pain of that loss and the tragic circumstances around it, and to use their energy and time to campaign for change. They know, as I do, that any action plan must be wide-ranging, comprehensive and multifaceted, because the prevalence of acquired brain injury among those with contact with the criminal justice system is reported to be around the 46% to 60% overall, between 50% to 87% among children, and 78% among women.

I have supported the work of Brainkind, an organisation that has evidenced the impact of brain injury on domestic abuse survivors. Its report, “Too Many to Count”, found that one in two survivors of domestic abuse may have sustained a brain injury, often through blows to the head or through non-fatal strangulation. As chair of the domestic violence and abuse all-party parliamentary group, I know that our membership is well aware of the correlation between women in prison and undiagnosed conditions such as acquired brain injury.

What is important for a revised or shorter action plan is to ensure that Departments and services speak to one another—that should be worked into the action plan itself—and that there are duties placed on national bodies, Government services and social services to collect and analyse data, and to share it with each other. Ultimately, if we look at the case of Imran, even just data collection and sharing between services could have perhaps prevented his death.

It is also important to ensure that the action plan invests in awareness training and support. Brainkind is doing some work around that, and has developed a new free tool—not a diagnostic tool, but a tool that professionals can use for support when working with survivors of acquired brain injury. Those are the areas that we need to look at if we want not just to present, but to deliver an action plan that can be passed through as soon as possible.

My constituent Amy has shown incredible resilience and fortitude; she is someone who reflects on what happened to her son and commits herself to trying to change things in society. While she continues to advocate for changes to the way in which serious case reviews are conducted, and to the difficult, onerous processes around them, she knows that the picture is much larger. It is a nationwide issue and it needs a national framework.

I mention Amy again because there is a need for serious case reviews, and I saw what she and Imran’s father Masum went through in trying to secure one. From my engagement with the all-party parliamentary group for acquired brain injury, and with other survivors and families that I have met, I can say that the thresholds that need to be met for a serious case review are applied inconsistently by local government and social services across the country. That is why there are not that many serious case reviews—I appreciate that they are reviews of serious cases, but the threshold seems incredibly high, even when a situation presents itself where it is probably better to have one than not.

I raise that issue because some of these matters could be addressed through a strategy and a more focused, shortened, action-oriented plan for the issue. A number of campaigners have called for data collection, analysis, awareness, training, data sharing and collaboration. I started engaging on these issues and matters as a result of my constituents’ case. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash) mentioned, since about 2020 we have had lots of discussions, meetings and engagement. Progress was made under the previous Government to present a strategy, but we need to deliver it now. It has been five years since I started engaging on these issues. We need a society where no one loses their life to murder or suicide. I hope that the Minister can relay to us some form of timeline for when action plans and strategies can be delivered.