Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he has taken to ensure that patients with a learning disability are able to access a specialist learning disability nurse when they attend hospital.

The latest national learning disability improvement standards annual survey shows that approximately two thirds of National Health Service trusts in England directly employ learning disability liaison nurses. Trusts that do not directly employ learning disability liaison nurses often have a shared support arrangement in place with their local specialist mental health trust to access a learning disability nurse.