Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to monitor progress on reducing the number of people with a learning disability and autism in mental health hospitals.

The Mental Health Bill, introduced in the House of Lords on 6 November 2024, proposes a package of measures to ensure people with a learning disability and autistic people get the support they need in the community, improving care and keeping people out of hospitals.

The Assuring Transformation data set is our primary source for people with a learning disability and autistic people who are in hospital for a mental health condition. This data is published monthly and shows the number of people with a learning disability and autistic people who are in mental health inpatient settings. We will continue to evaluate this data.

National Health Service planning guidance, published on 30 January 2025, includes a focus on improving mental health and learning disability care and contains the objective to deliver a minimum 10% reduction in the use of mental health inpatient care for people with a learning disability and autistic people in 2025/26. This supports the aim to reach a position of no more than 30 adults or between 12 and 15 children aged under 18 years old for every one million population.