Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to reduce the number of children waiting two years for mental health treatment on the NHS.

We know that too many children and young people are not receiving the mental health care they need and that waits for mental health services are too long. We are determined to change that.

Nationally, the Government is providing £7 million of funding to extend support for 24 Early Support Hubs, that have a track record of helping thousands of young people in their community.

We will provide access to a specialist mental health professional in every school in England, so that mental health conditions can be identified early on and prevented from developing into more serious conditions in later life. We will also roll out Young Futures Hubs to provide open access mental health support for children and young people.

In addition, we plan to recruit an additional 8,500 mental health workers across child and adult mental health services in England to ease the pressure on busy mental health services.