NHS: Mental Health Funding

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd April 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to ensure that NHS England funds mental health in line with the requirement for parity of esteem.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, and refer noble Lords to my health interests.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe) (Con)]

My Lords, our aim is to ensure that mental health has equal priority with physical health. We have made this an objective of NHS England. The mandate of NHS England makes it clear that everyone who needs it should have timely access to the best available treatment, including in mental health services. We enshrined in law the equal status of mental and physical health in the Health and Social Care Act 2012.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, that is all well and good, but the noble Earl knows that NHS England has not carried out the instructions in the mandate, and in the tariff for this year it has discriminated in the funding of mental health services. In our most recent debate on this, the noble Earl said that we should not worry about it because clinical commissioning groups will be heavily monitored. But the Government have no power to instruct clinical commissioning groups to make up for this rather perverse decision by NHS England. So I ask the noble Earl: will he not intervene and tell NHS England to reverse this funding policy?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, as the noble Lord will know, the tariff for mental health services is determined locally. Having said that, we are clear that it is important that these tariffs and the priority given to mental health are scrutinised very carefully indeed, which is why my honourable friend the Minister of State for Care and Support has said he will do just that in the case of every single clinical commissioning group. If he determines that the plans are unsatisfactory, we as Ministers will work with NHS England, which we do regularly, to ensure that there is indeed that progress to parity of esteem that we all want to see throughout the country.