Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the impact of the cost of living on mental health.

We are committed to supporting everyone’s mental wellbeing and we want to ensure services are there for anyone who experiences a mental health crisis. We are working across Government and with external partners to identify who is most vulnerable to the impacts of increased cost of living, and what action can be taken to support them.

The Government announced a £37 billion package of cost of living support to help households and businesses, including a £15 billion targeted package of direct support for the most vulnerable households.

NHS England released a further £1.5 billion in the 2023/24 financial year to National Health Service integrated care systems to manage the rising costs of energy and inflation more broadly. It will be up to individual integrated care boards to decide how best to allocate this funding to reduce the burdens on mental health hospitals and community mental health provision.