Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of allocating additional capital funding to the mental health estate in the forthcoming Spending Review.

Government has committed £3.9bn of new capital investment by 2022/23 to transform and modernise NHS buildings.

Of this, £2.6bn of capital funding has been allocated to 153 STP transformation schemes – the single biggest injection of its kind in the NHS in over a decade. This includes about £300m for mental health and learning disability schemes.

In addition, the Department of Health and Social Care spent almost £25m capital last year on central programmes to support mental health services. This includes schemes to deliver Perinatal Mental Health Mother & Baby Units to deliver more personalised care to expectant and new mums with serious mental ill health.

Improving mental health is at the heart of this government’s agenda and the STP capital investment is another step in the government’s ambition to achieve greater parity between physical and mental health care.

All future capital funding proposals will be assessed at the forthcoming Zero-Based Capital Review at the Spending Review.

The government is increasing NHS spending by £33.9bn in cash terms by 2023/24 – reflecting that the NHS is this government’s top spending priority.