Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department takes to provide (a) information on its services in British Sign Language (BSL) and (b) correspondence in BSL to people whose principal language is BSL; and what steps he has taken to encourage GPs and other practitioners to provide (i) prescriptions, (ii) details of medical appointments and (iii) other essential personal medical documents in BSL to people whose principal language is BSL.

Departmental publications are available in British Sign Language (BSL) on request. The Department does not provide a correspondence service in BSL, nor has it received any requests for such a service.

General practitioners and other health and care professionals have a legal duty to comply with the Accessible Information Standard, which sets out a series of requirements that organisations providing National Health Service care or publicly funded social care in England must follow. These include arranging for communication support, including support to BSL users, where this is needed for effective communication. The Standard does not direct how such support should be arranged or funded, as this is a matter for local decision.