Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of the debate entitled Deinstitutionalisation of persons with disabilities, which took place at the Council of Europe on 26 April 2022.

We welcome this debate, as the NHS Long Term Plan committed to achieving at least a 50% reduction in the number of people with a learning disability and autistic people who are inpatients in mental health hospitals by March 2024.

The proposed reforms to the Mental Health Act 1983 aim to end inappropriate detentions of people with a learning disability and autistic people. We are also developing the ‘Building the right support’ action plan to reduce reliance on mental health inpatient care through the provision of services in the community.