Mental Health: Parity of Esteem

Liz Twist Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Wera Hobhouse (in the Chair)]

I will call Liz Twist to move the motion and then call the Minister to respond. I remind other Members that they may make a speech only with prior permission from the Member in charge of the debate and the Minister. As is the convention in 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon and Consett) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered parity of esteem between physical and mental health.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse. In my constituency surgeries I see the devastating consequences of our failure to treat mental illness with the urgency it requires. In my role as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on suicide and self-harm prevention, I hear from young people about their experiences and the impact of waiting for treatment from mental health services. Bad mental health is routinely cited as a reason for economic stagnation, low school attendance rates and an increase in benefit claimants. Long waits for mental health support are directly linked to worsening symptoms and, tragically, to spikes in self-harm and suicide attempts.

[Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)]

Tragically, my constituent’s husband, John, took his own life in 2021 after a mental health crisis while in the care of NHS mental health services. Does the hon. Member agree that we need more Government support and funding for access to quality mental health services in rural areas? If we were losing people in this way to physical conditions, it would be a national scandal.

[Liz Twist]

The hon. Member might be reading my mind, because I will come on to that issue. I am sorry to hear of the death of his constituent—it is tragic.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for securing the debate, and she is absolutely right to address this issue. In Northern Ireland, we have extreme mental health issues; indeed, the figure is 25% higher than it is here on the mainland. The Government have made a commitment to address the nation’s physical health. Does the hon. Lady agree that they must now treat the nation’s mental health equally? In doing so, they will address the emotional issues among the people we represent here.

[Liz Twist]

I do agree, and I will expand more on that theme.

Parity of esteem means tackling mental health with exactly the same respect, funding and clinical focus as physical conditions.

[Danny Beales (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate, and I know that she is a strong advocate for mental health in her role on the APPG. In the NHS, it is vital that funding for mental health keeps pace with funding for physical health care, and the mental health investment standard has been a crucial policy in driving parity of investment. Does she agree that it is vital that the mental health investment standard is retained in the NHS?

--- Later in debate ---

[Liz Twist]

I agree with my hon. Friend on the importance of the mental health investment standard as one of the measures for securing good mental health support and for making mental health equal with physical health.

As I was saying, parity of esteem means tackling mental health with the same respect, funding and clinical focus as physical conditions. We are here today to debate that principle, which has been discussed in this place for over a decade, yet it remains unfulfilled. We have made great strides in mental health: the Mental Health Act 2025, investment in mental health support teams for schools, which were rolled out this week, and additional mental health workers. Now it is time to deliver on our manifesto commitment to

“give mental health the same attention and focus as physical health.”

We need to look at the current waiting lists for mental health support, but before I look at the figures, I remind Members that every patient waiting to access mental health support is in urgent need of support, just as those on physical health waiting lists are. Sadly, and all too often, people see their condition worsen as they wait, which can lead to extreme consequences. Furthermore, physical illnesses frequently cause profound psychological distress, yet our services treat the physical and the mental in isolation. From my experiences of working with people who have rare conditions, I know the impact that that can have.

The most recent figures show that almost 1.87 million adults and over 576,000 children and young people currently hold open referrals for mental health services. If these were patients waiting for hip replacements or cardiac care, that would dominate the national discourse. NHS England has developed waiting list targets for mental health patients after referral—the longest being four weeks after referral for access to community-based services for non-urgent mental health care—but those developed standards have never been adopted. Research shows that 12 times more patients with mental health conditions are waiting longer than 18 months for treatment, compared to those with physical conditions. The Government have rightly instructed the NHS to drive down waiting times for elective physical health care, but so far mental health services have been excluded from that ambition.

The situation for our children and young people is particularly concerning. Barnardo’s says that one in five children now has a probable mental health disorder, which is double the rate in 2017. Demand has increased hugely, yet around 28% of referred children are still waiting for help, with nearly 40,000 facing unthinkable waits of over two years for treatment. We see the human cost of those delays in the lives of people like Amy, a young woman diagnosed with complex post-traumatic stress disorder. She has spent over a decade isolated at home, yet she has seen a psychiatrist only once in those 10 years. We also see it in the harrowing accounts collected by Rethink Mental Illness. One patient told Rethink that their psychosis was full-on and that an attempted suicide was the only thing that got them help. That is an unacceptable threshold for care.

I have heard of more experiences from the suicide prevention charity Body and Soul, with which I have worked. One young person it supported spent almost a year on an NHS waiting list for cognitive behavioural therapy. Just as they neared the top of the list, their health deteriorated into a severe crisis, and they attended A&E, battling suicidal thoughts. Instead of receiving urgent intervention, they were informed that their crisis made them “too severe” for the therapy they had waited so long to access. They were removed from the waiting list entirely and, with nowhere else to turn, they attempted to end their own life. As Body and Soul rightly highlights, no patient with a life-threatening physical condition would be told they are too ill to qualify for treatment, unlike in this case.

Mental health charity Mind is calling for the development of open-access mental health support pathways, ensuring that people can seek help early and directly, without facing unnecessary referral barriers or rigid clinical thresholds. When we fail to provide accessible care, the results can be fatal. People living with severe mental illness face a premature mortality gap of 15 to 20 years, compared to the rest of the population. Closing that gap by treating mental health with the same urgency as physical health must be the baseline of our approach. Rethink Mental Illness recently found that 83% of people said their mental health deteriorated while waiting for support, and nearly a third of those whose health worsened attempted suicide. Families are making impossible choices, with some parents reporting that they are skipping meals to pay for private therapy for their children because they cannot get the help they need.

This crisis in mental health impacts on our Government’s core mission to kick-start economic growth. We are seeing a rise in economic inactivity driven by long-term sickness, and poor mental health is a primary factor. The Mental Health Foundation estimates that the economic and social costs of mental health problems reach £118 billion a year. Those figures have not arisen overnight; the previous Conservative Government have much to answer for in this crisis.

We need to make sure that we maintain the emphasis on mental health. Last year, the Department of Health and Social Care reported that the proportion of NHS funding spent on mental health is expected to decline over the next two years. We need to look at that again.

[Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend was a champion for mental health long before I came to this House, and I congratulate her on securing the debate. She makes a point about spending, and I read this morning that despite 28% of cases in the NHS being related to mental health, it receives only 13% of the funding. That is at the same time that parity of esteem has been a legal requirement for over a decade. If we are serious about parity of esteem between physical and mental health, the spending must follow the rhetoric.

[Liz Twist]

My hon. Friend is quite right to point to those figures and to say that we need much more input into tackling that difference in funding.

As I said, the proportion of NHS funding spent on mental health is expected to decline, and we need to look again at that. That is exactly why the mental health investment standard was introduced, and why we need the planned 10-year mental health strategy, when it is published, to set out the actions we need to take to ensure that mental health has parity of esteem with physical health. It is vital that the MHIS continues to protect mental health spending until a suitable long-term funding measure is firmly in place to ensure that funding matches need.

Three weeks ago, the interim Milburn review highlighted the unique combination of pressures faced by young people entering adulthood today, including a mental health system that cannot respond to the current level and severity of demand, a pandemic that affected their social development and an ongoing loneliness crisis.

[Gordon McKee (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way. I know that this is a topic she understands deeply and has campaigned on for many years. She is right to highlight the Milburn review. Does she agree that part of the response has to be developing a mental health support system that is preventive, not just reactive? We see that in child and adolescent mental health, particularly in Scotland, where there are enormous waitlists. We have to tackle those, but we also have to have a system—in education, for example—where we prevent people from reaching crisis, whether in childhood or when they become adults.

[Liz Twist]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, which is why I am so pleased that we set up mental health teams in schools.

We need to look at preventive measures so that we do not keep getting into this position. When people are left to languish on waiting lists, their ability to participate in the workforce collapses. We must stop waiting for people to hit rock bottom before we step in: we have to deploy preventive measures. It is simply not good enough that one in three young people must wait more than 18 months for treatment after referral.

I welcome the changes the Government have implemented, the extra investment for mental health support in schools, and the expansion of that support to 100% of schools by 2030, but I have some specific asks of the Minister, supported by mental health charities. First, will she ensure that reducing waiting times for non-urgent community mental health care is included as a specific priority in NHS planning guidance? That would send a clear message to local systems that this must be tackled alongside elective physical care.

Secondly, Mind, the mental health charity, says that reducing mental health care waiting times must be treated as a core test of parity of esteem; Rethink makes the same point. Will the Minister commit to fully rolling out the access and waiting time standards consulted on by NHS England in 2021 to ensure that emergency mental health care is provided within one hour, urgent care within four hours and community care within four weeks?

Thirdly, to help us to meet our shared ambitions for parity of esteem, will the Minister outline how we will work together to reverse the projected decline over the next two years in the proportion of NHS funding spent on mental health? Will the Government also commit to protecting the mental health investment standard until a long-term alternative funding plan is firmly in place?

Finally, the Government have outlined an ambitious shift toward neighbourhood health services. How will the Department ensure that community mental health is a central component of this roll-out, so that patients can access multidisciplinary support before they reach crisis point? We have a historic opportunity to build a national health service that treats the mind and the body with equal respect. I look forward to the Minister’s response on how we will finally deliver true parity of esteem between physical and mental health services.