Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what plans he has to increase mental health funding in real terms in the next spending review period.

Spending on mental health is estimated to have increased by £302 million in 2014/15, with total mental health spending rising from £11.362 billion in 2013/14 to £11.664 billion planned in 2014/15, an increase of 0.6% in real terms. In the planning requirements for 2015/16, commissioners were required to invest additionally in mental health in line with their increase in allocation. The total planned additional spend is £376 million, an increase of 4.5%.

From March this year NHS England has led the Mental Health Taskforce. The Taskforce brings together health and care leaders and experts in the field, including people using services, to lead a programme of work to create a mental health Five Year Forward View for the National Health Service in England.

The Mental Health Taskforce will:

- oversee the publication of a new ‘life course’ national mental health strategy published in the summer of 2015, which builds on recent policy;

- address equality and human rights commitments relating to the mental health of our population;

- take a collective approach to cross-system leadership in development of the strategy and propose robust approaches to implementation following publication;

- make comprehensive recommendations on the mechanisms and data requirements to implement the mental health strategy and to monitor delivery and outcomes of it;

- ensure that priorities, costs and benefits within the strategy are assessed;

- identify strategic and directional risks and issues, and work to resolve these; and

- ensure that people with personal experience of mental health problems, their families and carers, and wider stakeholders are engaged appropriately and consistently in the delivery, monitoring and governance of the strategy.

This will inform considerations for mental health funding in the next spending review.