Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure the availability of mental health care, following the COVID-19 pandemic.

In March 2021, we published COVID-19 mental health and wellbeing recovery action plan: Our plan to prevent, mitigate and respond to the mental health impacts of the pandemic during 2021 to 2022, funded by an additional £500 million for 2021-22 to address waiting times for services. The plan aims to respond to the pandemic by specifically targeting groups which have been most impacted, including those with severe mental illness, young people and frontline staff. A copy of the plan is attached.