Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department is taking to help improve access to mental health services.

We are committed to improving access to mental health services. Through the National Health Service Long Term Plan, we are investing at least £2.3 billion a year by 2023/24 so that an additional two million people can access NHS-funded mental health support.

We also provided an additional £500 million for 2021/22, to accelerate our NHS mental health expansion plans and to target groups whose mental health have been most affected by the pandemic including those with severe mental illness, young people, and frontline staff.