Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many hours on average police officers spend in Accident and Emergency each month waiting for sectioned people to receive treatment.

The Home Office collects and publishes data on detentions under section 135 and section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983, by financial year, as part of the Police Powers and Procedures statistical bulletin.

The most recent data, for the year ending March 2022, are available here:

Police powers and procedures: Other PACE powers, England and Wales, year ending 31 March 2022 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Number of detentions under the Mental Health Act 1983, by year and legislation, England and Wales^1,2, 2020/21 to 2021/22

Notes:

1. Section 136 - Excludes Dyfed-Powys who were unable to provide data in 2020/21 and only provided partial data in 2021/22. Including Dyfed-Powys, there were 36,594 detentions in 2021/22.
2. Section 135 – Excludes 6 forces who were unable to provide data in either year (Dyfed-Powys, Merseyside, Sussex, Cheshire, Hampshire and Devon and Cornwall police forces).
3. Data for section 135 is labelled as Experimental Statistics due to data quality issues, therefore should be interpreted with caution.

Data are not available broken down by month.

The section 136 data includes a breakdown by place of safety that the person was first taken to, such as A&E. However, data on the amount of time police officers spend at the place of safety are not collected.

Data for the year ending March 2023 will be published in Autumn 2023.