Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people were transported to a place of safety under the Mental Health Act 1983 by (a) ambulance and (b) police vehicle in each of the last three years.

The information requested is not held centrally.

The method of transportation used to take people detained under section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983 was included in experimental data collected from 15 police forces for the Home Office publication ‘Police Powers and Procedures, England and Wales, year ending 31 March 2016’. The publication indicated that for half of all detentions under section 136 in 2015-16, the person detained was transported to a place of safety in a police vehicle and in a further 49% of cases the person was transported in an ambulance.

Data on the method of transportation used has been included in a mandatory annual data request to all police forces for the year 2016-17 on the use of sections 135 and 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983, for publication by the Home Office this Autumn.