Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to the Oral Answer of 1 April 2014, Official Report, column 714, on physical and mental health (parity of esteem), in what ways he plans to achieve complete transparency in the availability of data on mental health spending.

NHS England currently collects and publishes information about mental health spending via its Programme Budgeting Dataset and published expenditure data for 2012-13 on 21 February 2014. This is available on its website at:

www.england.nhs.uk/resources/resources-for-ccgs/prog-budgeting/

We are working with NHS England to support its plans to develop this dataset for 2013-14 to provide a more meaningful analysis of expenditure.