Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of patients detained under the Mental Health Act 1983 have been discharged from detention following a First-Tier Mental Health Tribunal (a) paper and (b) oral hearing in each of the last five years for which data is available.

The First-Tier Mental Health Tribunal does not centrally record the outcomes of tribunal hearings broken down by whether the case was considered on paper or at an oral hearing. Therefore, this information could only be obtained at disproportionate cost. However, in 2017/18 cases considered on paper composed 2.5% of all hearings in the tribunal.