National Health Service: Mental Health Funding

Lord Cotter Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Cotter]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what proportion of mental health treatment is funded by the National Health Service nationally as against local funding.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord O’Shaughnessy) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are committed to increasing spending on mental health. In 2017-18, the NHS spent an indicative figure of £11.86 billion on mental health. Of this total, £9.97 billion was locally funded by clinical commissioning groups, with the remainder for nationally commissioned specialised services.

[Lord Cotter (LD)]

I hear what the Minister says, but parity between mental and physical health remains a concern. He knows about the facility for mental health in Weston-super-Mare and the problems associated with its future. However, I have found this problem around facilities in local areas to be widespread throughout the country. Their funding is not predominantly mainstream NHS money for mental health services, but NHS money is often used to plug holes elsewhere and local mental health units are struggling. Will the Minister address the issues of parity and funding for local mental health care?

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

I agree with the noble Lord that we need to increase funding for local mental health services. That has been happening over the past few years; indeed, between 2015-16 and 2018-19 it has gone up by £1 billion. I turn to his point about mental health funding being used for other purposes. I want to be clear that there is NHS England guidance that that should not happen, and from this financial year all CCGs will have to meet what is called the mental health investment standard, which means that they are to increase their spending on mental health at least as much as, if not more than, their spending on physical health.