An NHS mental health trust in England has withdrawn from a controversial counter-terrorism programme that enabled police to access medical information of patients– including young children – deemed to be vulnerable to extremism, Middle East Eye can reveal.
Documents seen by MEE show that Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust (BSMHFT), which serves 1.3 million people across the West Midlands, withdrew from the Counter Terrorism Clinical Consultancy Service (CTCCS) from 1 April 2025.
The CTCCS is a joint initiative between Counter Terrorism Policing and the NHS in England and Wales in which mental health practitioners advise on and assess individuals flagged by police as potential security risks, often without any crime having been committed.
Campaigners and researchers say the service created a new pathway for counter terrorism police to access medical information for risk management purposes.
The Birmingham-based NHS trust is one of three NHS trusts that have been involved in the programme since its launch in 2016.
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But a spokesperson confirmed the trust had taken the decision to withdraw from the programme in March 2025.
“The decision was made because the service was no longer considered to align to the trust’s strategic priorities. Other trust’s strategic priorities are for their boards and management to decide,” the spokesperson said.
Its withdrawal marks the first publicly confirmed exit by an NHS trust from the programme and appears to represent a significant blow to a project that critics say has quietly embedded counter-terror policing within mental healthcare.
Medical data for policing purposes
The scheme first came to light in 2021 following an investigation by Medact, a campaign group that challenges inequality in healthcare, which used Freedom of Information requests to reveal that NHS clinicians were working directly alongside counter-terrorism police.
The programme operated initially through units known as “Vulnerability Support Hubs” and assessed individuals referred through policing channels – including children as young as six – for perceived vulnerability to extremism.
Psychiatrists, psychologists and mental health nurses working in the units are required to undergo rigorous police vetting to obtain the security clearance necessary to access highly sensitive intelligence.
‘Mental health workers should be providing patients with care, not spying on them for police’
– Hil Aked, Medact research manager
Over a five-year period, more than 3,000 people, many of them teenagers, have been referred to the hubs, which were piloted in regional counter-terrorism police units in England’s three biggest urban areas: London, Birmingham and Manchester.
Common referrals handled by the units have included psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia, personality disorders, mood disorders and autistic spectrum disorders, as well as learning difficulties.
Under the model, clinicians were brought into counter-terrorism case discussions and provided clinical input to police.
According to researchers, CTCCS clinicians routinely contacted doctors, psychologists and mental health teams to request sensitive medical information, including diagnoses and treatment compliance.
While clinicians could technically refuse to share information, critics say data was frequently provided and analysed by CTCCS teams before being used to inform counter-terror policing decisions.
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Critics said the arrangement blurred the boundary between care and surveillance, undermined patient consent, and repurposed NHS expertise for intelligence-led policing.
Ethical concerns have long swirled around the Prevent counter-terrorism programme’s embedding in healthcare and education, where public sector workers including NHS staff and teachers are obliged under the Prevent Duty to refer people they deem to be “susceptible to radicalisation”.
In a new document titled “Key Principles of Prevent”, published on Monday, the Home Office described Prevent as “the only programme which offers multi-agency radicalisation risk management and support”.
A form for Prevent referrals to the police includes a question asking for information about “diagnosed disabilities, neurodiversity needs, or mental health issues” of the person concerned.
Medact research manager Hil Aked welcomed the Birmingham trust’s decision to withdraw from the programme, describing it as “unethical and Islamophobic”.
“Mental health workers should be providing patients with care, not spying on them for police,” Aked told MEE.
“We call on the remaining NHS trusts still participating to follow suit and withdraw, as a necessary step towards defending our health service from the ever-increasing encroachment of state security.”
Information shared without consent
Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust was one of three NHS trusts that formed the backbone of the counterterrorism programme from its inception in 2016.
The trust processed all referrals from the Midlands and Wales, giving it a central operational role within the national scheme. Researchers say the trust maintained a dedicated team working on the programme for several years.
Professor Charlotte Heath-Kelly, an international security scholar at the University of Warwick who researches counter-terrorism policy, said the Birmingham trust’s decision to withdraw from the scheme was highly significant.
‘Researchers showed that the hubs assessed Muslims at a ratio of 28 to one compared to white British ethnicity referrals’
– Professor Charlotte Heath-Kelly, University of Warwick
“Their withdrawal from the CTCCS is striking and speaks to a 180-degree turnaround in the trust’s approach to sharing medical information and participating in the controversial profiling of mental health and neurodiversity in terms of extremism risk,” said Heath-Kelly.
The programme had enabled counter-terrorism police to access medical data through pathways that bypassed established NHS safeguards and breached patient privacy rules, she added.
“The significance of the CTCCS is that the service can share medical information with counterterrorism case officers without the consent of the service user,” Heath-Kelly said.
“This information – about autism, psychosis or schizophrenia – is then used to profile the terrorism risk of people in the community. The CTCCS and the NHS do not inform patients that their information has been shared with counterterrorism case officers.”
Heath-Kelly also pointed to evidence that the programme disproportionately affected racialised and Muslim communities.
“Using census data on the numbers of Muslims residing in each region of England and Wales, researchers showed that the hubs assessed Muslims at a ratio of 28 to one compared to white British ethnicity referrals,” she said.
Heath-Kelly said concerns about confidentiality and racialised profiling had been raised directly by campaigners with participating NHS trusts.
“Shortly after we made this information public, complaints were filed about violations of NHS confidentiality norms with each participating trust,” Heath-Kelly said.
“BSMHFT subsequently decided it was no longer in the trust’s strategic interests to continue participating.”
NHS England, British Counter-Terror Police and the Home Office had not responded to requests for comment at the time of publication.