Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what guidance NHS England gave to the Learning Disabilities Mortality Review (LeDeR) research team on how findings, trends, and avoidable deaths should be presented in the 2023 and 2024 annual reports and their accompanying summaries.

As part of the usual process for producing the independent Learning Disabilities Mortality Review annual report, officials provide comments and suggestions for the academic team to consider in order to support accurate presentation and accessibility for the public, as discussed in the response provided on 13 August in response to Question HL9449, which, for ease of reference, is reproduced below.

NHS England works with Kings College London, the academic partner for LeDeR, to produce the LeDeR annual report. Since they submitted their draft report, NHS England has collaborated with them on further iterations with the aim to finalise as soon as possible.

The Department has provided feedback on later iterations of the report on practical data issues with the aim to ensure findings were accurately presented and could be clearly interpreted by the public. Feedback related to definition of technical language, additional context for demographic statistics, and apparent inconsistencies. A final version of the report addressing feedback was shared with the Department on 25 June 2025.

We are committed to publishing the latest report soon after Parliament returns alongside a Written Ministerial Statement.

King’s College London retain full academic independence and editorial responsibility for the analysis, interpretation and final wording of the reports, and are also responsible for issuing the press release summarising the key findings of each report. The Written Ministerial Statement HLWS229 accompanying publication of the 2024 report reinforced a number of those findings, and explicitly recognised that inequalities remained unacceptable.