Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Minister for Social Care's oral contribution of 3 December 2015, Official Report, column 608, what progress his Department has made on putting in place a national ambition to reduce the number of adults sent out-of-area for acute inpatient mental health care.

In-line with the recommendations of the Independent Mental Health Taskforce published in February 2016, we have set a national ambition to eliminate inappropriate out of area treatments for adult acute inpatient care as a result of local acute bed pressures by 2020/21 at the latest. To achieve this ambition we expect areas to put in place local action plans and achieve year on year reductions from 2016/17.