To ask the Secretary of State for Health what estimate he made of the number of empty beds in (a) low, (b) medium and (c) high security mental health hospitals on each day in the last 12 months. (277818)

These data are not collected centrally to this level of detail.

Data are collected by the Department on the average daily bed occupancy level in all low, medium and high secure units in a given year. In 2007-08, the average daily number of available beds in all secure units in England was 3,159, with an average daily occupancy rate of 2,885 beds or 91.3 per cent.

Snapshot data were collected on 30 September 2008, but only in respect of high secure services, when 879 beds were available, with an overall occupancy rate of 90.4 per cent. The data include 48 designated learning disability beds. Separate data for low secure and medium secure units’ bed occupancy levels have not been collected by the Department.