Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to Department's report entitled Achieving Better Access to Mental Health Services by 2020 that was published in October 2014, what recent progress his Department has made to deliver parity of esteem between services for (a) mental and (b) physical illnesses.

Since the ‘Achieving Better Access to Mental Health Services by 2020’ report we have introduced access and waiting time standards for both Early Intervention in Psychosis and Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) services. Over one million adults already access IAPT services each year and this will be expanded to cover a total of 1.9 million by 2023-24.Through the NHS Long Term Plan, we are expanding and transforming mental health services in England, investing an additional £2.3 billion a year by 2023-24. This will see spending for mental health services growing faster than the overall National Health Service budget.

There are now specialist perinatal mental health community services for new and expectant mothers in every part of the country and we are extending this further, with 26 new mental health hubs, offering physical health checks and psychological therapy, by April 2022. We have met our commitment for an additional 70,000 children and young people accessing NHS-funded mental health services and school or college-based mental health support teams. We are committed to further increasing this to 345,000 by 2023-24.