Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Whately Excerpts

Tuesday 8th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Steve Brine)]

I will be very happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to look at his local issue.

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

I welcome the Green Paper on mental health in schools, which was published earlier this year, but it does prompt a question about the mental health of students in further and higher education. Does my right hon. Friend have any plans to look into that issue? If he does not, may I urge him to do so?

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question and her continued industry on these matters. As she mentioned, the Green Paper outlined plans to set up a new national strategic partnership focused on improving the mental health of 16 to 25-year-olds. That partnership is likely to support and build on sector-led initiatives in higher education, such as Universities UK’s #stepchange project, whose launch I attended in September. The strategy calls on higher education leaders to adopt mental health as a strategic priority, to take a whole-university approach to mental health and to embed it across policies, courses and practices. [Interruption.]