Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether each Integrated Care System is required to reduce the number of (a) people with a learning disability and (b) autistic people from their area in mental health hospitals by 10 per cent within 2025-26.

National Health Service planning guidance for 2025/26 includes a focus on improving care for people with a learning disability and autistic people 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. As part of operational planning, each integrated care board (ICB) is expected to: reduce the number of adults with a learning disability, including those who may also be autistic, in mental health inpatient care by 20% from a 31 March 2024 baseline by 31 March 2026; and reduce the number of autistic adults, with no learning disability, in mental health inpatient care by 20% from a 31 March 2024 baseline by 31 March 2026.

The baseline is from Assuring Transformation data and was extracted from 31 March 2024. The expectation is that ICBs will have been working towards achieving a 10% reduction from the 31 March 2024 baseline by 31 March 2025 and will build on this during 2025/26. They are therefore expected to achieve a 20% reduction from the 31 March 2024 baseline by 31 March 2026.