Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of access to care for those in mental health crisis, and what steps his Department is taking to improve the provision of mental health care in the community.

We recognise the importance of people being able to access the support they need when they experience a mental health crisis. We have committed to investing an extra £2.3 billion a year for mental health services by 2023/24. Around half of this will go to improving services to help people experiencing mental health crises and community mental health services.

The NHS Long Term Plan commits to 24-hour mental health crisis support being available via NHS 111 by 2023/24 alongside increased investment in a range of complementary and alternative crisis services, improvements in the mental health response from the ambulance service and testing of appropriate access and waiting times standards for urgent and emergency mental healthcare.

In September 2019, we announced funding to expand and transform community mental health services for people with mental health conditions in 12 pilot areas. This is the first step in a £975 million investment to transform community mental health services as part of the NHS Long Term Plan. These 12 pilot sites will receive £70 million funding for new specialist services for mental health community care, revamping local NHS services to build closer ties with charities, local councils and others.