Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment has been made of the effectiveness of the assessment and treatment of prisoner mental health.

NHS England is working with partners across the criminal justice and immigration removal system to improve services for offenders and detainees with mental health difficulties.

National Health Service England specialised commissioners and NHS England health and justice (H&J) Commissioners have also been working collaboratively alongside the mental health team in NHS England to develop work to improve mental health of prisoners and to develop and improve the system for transfers and remissions of adult prisoners to mental health hospitals

Mental health summits are being delivered regionally to develop the whole offender mental health pathway, identifying local anomalies, and gaps as well as good practice, and producing locally owned action plans to improve services.

In addition, new service specifications have been published for both low and medium secure hospitals as well as prison mental health services. The prison mental health specification embeds the ‘Standards for Prison Mental Health Services’, developed by the Royal College of Psychiatrists to ensure high quality care for all.