HC Deb 28 July 2000 vol 354 cc1167-8W
Mr. Heppell

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he will publish the outcome of the Government's consultation on its proposals for managing dangerous people with severe personality disorders; and if he will make a statement. [133795]

Mr. Boateng

The Government's proposals for those who are dangerous and severely personality disordered—published in a consultation document in July 1999—deal with a longstanding challenge to public safety. The proposals will ensure that individuals who fall into this group whether in prison, high security hospitals or, as in the case of a very small number, at large in the community, are in future detained in circumstances where they will be subject to a range of high quality interventions designed to manage the consequences of their disorder and released only when they are assessed as being safe to be re-integrated into the wider community. The consultation period for these proposals ended on 31 December 1999.

Following the conclusion of Spending Review 2000, information about the resources allocated by both the Home Office and the Department of Health for those aspects of the proposals concerned with the piloting and development of new services, will be published during the Summer.

The Government intend to publish their formal response to the consultation exercise to Parliament in the Autumn and will set out the detail of its proposals in a White Paper to be published before Christmas.