Source · Select Committees · Home Affairs Committee
Recommendation 35
35
Deferred
Paragraph: 79
Require additional departments and Home Office to respond to HMICFRS thematic reports.
Recommendation
HMICFRS states that, while it regularly makes recommendations to organisations other than police forces to improve public safety, only Police and Crime Commissioners are required to respond to its reports. We support HMICFRS’s call for further “additional departments and agencies” to be required to respond to its reports. This could include the Crown Prosecution Service and His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation for England and Wales, for example. We recommend a statutory requirement be put in place for the Home Office to respond to recommendations made by HMICFRS in its thematic reports within the life of the current Parliament.
Government Response Summary
The government's response entirely deflects the recommendation for a statutory requirement for other agencies and the Home Office to respond to HMICFRS reports by discussing funding for the Right Care Right Person (RCRP) program and broader investment in mental health services.
Paragraph Reference:
79
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government
Deferred
88. As the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Mental Health and Women’s Health Strategy has set out in correspondence with the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, although there is not currently any additional funding specifically allocated to deliver RCRP, NHS England will be working closely with DHSC to refine existing national resource estimates, based on intelligence from local systems as they develop their plans for implementation. DHSC will use this intelligence to potentially inform any fiscal events next year. 89. It is worth stating that this Government has already put record levels of investment into mental health. The NHS Long Term Plan commits an additional £2.3 billion a year for the expansion and transformation of mental health services in England by March 2024 so that an additional two million people can get the NHS-funded mental health support that they need. We are delivering £150 million capital funding for mental health urgent and emergency care. This includes funding for over 160 schemes which will provide new and improved spaces for people in mental health crisis, which in turn are expected to improve patient experience and outcomes, reduce the likelihood of inpatient admission being required and help reduce pressure on A&E departments and ambulance services. Many of these schemes will be completed by the end of 2023/24, and include new or improved crisis cafes, crisis houses and other alternatives to A&E for people nearing or experiencing mental health crisis. They also include spaces in or adjacent to A&E for people who do need hospital admission, crisis assessment and liaison centres and health-based places of safety for people detained by the police. 90. There of course remain challenges in responding to mental health needs as demand for crisis mental health services has increased by one third since before the pandemic and doubled since 2017, but the above measures will help towards easing the pressure on mental health crisis services and contribute to a reduction in police time spent responding to mental health-related incidents.