Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Huffington Post article entitled Police Driving Mental Health Patients To Hospital In 48 per cent Of All Crisis Cases, published on the 11 February 2019, what assessment his Department has made of (a) how mental health patients have been affected (b) how their recovery has been impacted by the experience of being transferred to hospital by a police car and not an ambulance.

The Code of Practice for the Mental Health Act 1983 is clear that “hospital or ambulance transport will usually be preferable to police transport, which should only be used exceptionally, such as in cases of extreme urgency or where there is an immediate risk of violence”. There are cases, as recognised in the Independent Review of the Mental Health Act, where a patient may request police transportation to minimise their own distress, and where police officers do not request an ambulance.

The Independent Review recommended in December that NHS England should invest capital and revenue to improve the ambulance fleet for mental health conveyance, to create new joined up functions between mental health services, ambulance services and other urgent and emergency care services. NHS England has confirmed in the NHS Long Term Plan that will be the case, and it will introduce new mental health transport vehicles to reduce inappropriate conveyance by police.

The Department has not made an assessment of how police transportation affects the recovery and health of people in mental health crisis.