Mental Health and NHS Performance

Norman Lamb Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I add to Mr Speaker’s comments my very good wishes and confidence that my hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Andrea Jenkyns) will get superb care from the NHS. I thank her for campaigning on patient safety. I am sure she will be pleased to hear that our principal safety campaign this year is on maternity safety.

In bald numbers, the plan will mean that we will treat 1 million more people with mental health conditions a year by the end of this Parliament. Of course, many of those will be in Yorkshire. An additional 70,000 young people will get treatment every single year and I hope that will bring down the CAMHS waiting times. We also want to do work in schools to prevent people from getting on the CAMHS waiting list in the first place.

[Norman Lamb (North Norfolk) (LD)]

The YoungMinds survey published before Christmas showed a failure in 50% of clinical commissioning group areas to spend the full amount of extra investment allocated to children and young people’s mental health. That is scandalous. I note the Secretary of State’s point about Ofsted-style ratings, but does he not need to introduce a system that guarantees that the money the Government promised for children’s mental health is actually spent as intended?

[Mr Hunt]

The right hon. Gentleman is right to want to ensure that we live up to those promises. He was a Minister when some of those promises were made and they are very important. I would say that we are delivering what he wants. We are on track this year to spend around £1 billion more, compared with two years ago when he was Minister for mental health. It has taken time for the NHS to get the message on mental health, but it is getting through loud and clear.