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 extent of staff shortages in the NHS mental health workforce; and what steps his Department is taking to tackle those shortages.

Expanding the mental health workforce is a key priority for the Government. We understand the need to get the right workforce in place to deliver our ambitious commitments to transform mental health services and, most importantly, achieve better outcomes for the people we are here to serve.

Our interim NHS People Plan set out immediate actions we will take to fill vacancies and secure the staff we need for the future – including addressing pensions tax concerns, increasing university clinical placements for all nursing specialities by over 5,000 more and bolstering the workforce through greater international recruitment.

In response to ‘Stepping forward to 2020/21: The mental health workforce plan for England’, the overall mental health workforce has grown by over 6,000 individuals since March 2017.