Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Health on ensuring that NHS providers fulfil requirements under the Mental Health Crisis Care Concordat.

The Home Office and Department of Health work closely, on an ongoing basis, on a wide range of issues related to mental health and policing including those covered by the Concordat.

The Minister for Vulnerability, Safeguarding and Counter Extremism and the Minister for Public Health and Innovation alternately chair the National Steering Group on the Crisis Care Concordat which monitors work across the country on local responses, including of NHS providers, to those in mental health crisis.

The Government has recently allocated some £15m in funding to 88 projects across 40 Crisis Care Concordat partnerships to improve places of safety provision and ensure that people in mental health crisis are not detained in police stations. A further £15m of funding has been announced to continue this work. Both departments are engaged in preparations for forthcoming changes to the Mental Health Act 1983 as contained in the Policing and Crime Act 2017 and which are designed to further improve the response to those in mental health crisis.