Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment the Government has made of NHS England's progress in achieving its Mandate objectives on mental health.

The Government’s Mandate to NHS England (NHSE) sets out clearly that “we expect NHSE to make rapid progress, working with Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) and other commissioners, to help deliver on our shared goal to have crisis services that, for an individual, are at all times as accessible, responsive and high quality as other health emergency services.”

We continue to take mental health as seriously as physical health and will hold the National Health Service to account for achieving the objectives set out in the NHS Mandate, ensuring that mental and physical health conditions are given equal priority.

NHSE will be monitoring spend against plan during the year in line with their normal review procedures.

NHSE’s planning guidance set out a clear expectation for CCGs in terms of increasing spend on mental health. CCGs were required to ensure that mental health spend will rise in real terms in every CCG and grow at least in line with each CCG’s overall allocation growth.

NHSE’s scrutiny of CCG plans shows that overall this expectation has been met. Programme growth was 3.7%, whereas the total planned additional spend is £383 million, an increase of 4.6%. This increase includes £70 million of mental health allocation currently held centrally within plans.