Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to reduce the number of autistic people and people with learning disabilities in care and health settings.

People with a learning disability and autistic people should have access to the same, high quality health and care that we all expect. The Government is implementing Building the Right Support national plan, which aims to reduce the number of people with a learning disability and autistic people in specialist inpatient settings by ensuring more people get the support they need in the community.

As part of this, we will provide £74 million (£62 million in England) over the three years from 2020/21 to support discharge for people with a learning disability and autistic people from hospital into the community. In England, the first year of funding (£20m) of has already been paid through the Community Discharge Grant to all nominated lead Local Authorities.