Urgent and Emergency Care Recovery Plan

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

Again, decisions on the estate are principally for the ICBs, but I am happy to look at any individual proposals my hon. Friend has on how we get more flow into the system, and that is about putting more capacity into the community.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I think I welcome what has been said about mental health ambulances and trying to divert people in mental health crisis from A&E, but I am a little concerned about whether those attending the scene in those ambulances will have access to the past records of people in that situation or be able to carry out a proper risk assessment for them. Will the Secretary of State reassure me on that, and also on whether there will be places other than A&E to take them to? It is one thing to say that we want to divert them, but we need to have other resources in place.

[Steve Barclay]

The hon. Lady raises a fair and important point about what is in the wider package, alongside the mental health ambulances, which I think are a positive step. Last week, I met Baroness Buscombe as part of the pre-legislative scrutiny of the proposed mental health legislation, which will pick up some of the points that the hon. Lady raises. Examples of innovation include empowering people before they have a mental health crisis to use one of the apps that have been developed to set out their statement of wishes and other information, which is very helpful for paramedic crews when they have a mental health crisis. We are looking at how we use innovation to better give voice to the patient, and often to do that before they have the mental health incident, rather than when the ambulance arrives.