Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of trends in the rate of referrals to mental health services in 2020 for (a) adults and (b) children compared to previous years.

The information in the attached table shows that adult and child referrals to secondary mental health, learning disabilities and autism spectrum disorder services increased during the first and second month of 2020 compared with 2019. Referrals then decreased from March and increased again from June onwards. Data for November and December 2020 have not yet been published. We have provided the last two years of data, to data quality.