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 potential effectiveness of social prescribing in improving (a) physical and (b) mental health.

The Department continues to work to understand the effectiveness of social prescribing to enhance physical and mental health building on existing positive local evidence.

As part of our commitment to the cross-Government, Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA)-led Green Social Prescribing Programme, we have commissioned and funded three clinical research feasibility studies that could lead to full Randomised Controlled Trials via the National Institute for Health and Care Research. These studies aim to test the effectiveness of nature-based activities on mental health outcomes, including outdoor swimming as a nature-based intervention for depression, angling to treat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and work with Newquay Orchard and the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust. The Department expects decisions to be made soon on whether they will proceed to full scale trials.