Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many deaths of people with a learning disability there have been in (a) assessment and treatment units and (b) other inpatient units in the last five years.

Information about deaths of people with a learning disability in assessment and treatment units is not collected centrally by the Department, NHS England or the Care Quality Commission.

The Health and Social Care Information Centre collects hospital episode statistics data. These data identify the number of hospital episodes where a patient had a primary or secondary diagnosis of a learning disability where the patient died.

From 2008-09 to 2012-2013 there were a total of 817 deaths for admitted patients at all hospitals in England. This number includes all deaths from all causes while a hospital patient.

The breakdown for each of the last five years is in the following table.

Source: Hospital Episode Statistics, Health and Social Care Information Centre

These data are not available by individual departments or units within hospitals. They also do not represent the deaths of people with learning disabilities where learning disability is not recorded as a primary or secondary diagnosis.

NHS England is setting up a National Learning Disability Mortality Review to better understand what causes people who have a learning disability to die, on average, at a younger age than other people; and to learn from what has happened to ensure that NHS services improve the way they care for people with a learning disability.