Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure parity of funding and service provision between physical health services and mental health services.

We are committed to giving mental health the same attention and focus as physical health. We know that, for people living with severe mental illness, life expectancy is 15 to 20 years shorter than that for the general population.

As the Medium-Term Planning Framework makes clear, we need a new approach for mental health, to drive down waits, improve the quality of care, and increase productivity of mental health services. Funding is a key part of this. We have set out that over the next three years, integrated care boards will be required to meet the mental health investment standard by protecting mental health spending in real terms. In other words, rising in line with inflation from 2026/27.

The 10-Year Health Plan sets out our vision for the neighbourhood health service. This is about bringing care into local communities, convening professionals into patient-centred teams, ending fragmentation, and abolishing the National Health Service default of ‘one size fits all’ care. Through six pilot sites we are testing 24/7 neighbourhood mental health centres. These provide round the clock, open-access to treatment and support for adults with severe mental health needs, and we are now looking to roll the model out more widely. The centres will work in close partnership with primary care to provide wraparound support for service users.