Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his department has made of trends in levels of completion of courses of NHS Talking Therapies treatment in (i) England and (ii) the Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care Board area.

NHS Talking Therapies continues to expand to deliver additional courses of treatment and increase session numbers to boost recovery. In 2024/25, 670,419 referrals completed course of treatment across England. For 2025/26, this figure was 671,262. However, this figure is based on performance data and will be updated when the annual publication is published in September. We are working towards the expectation that a total of 915,000 people will have completed treatment by 2028/29.

Over the last two years, 2024/25 and 2025/26, the Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care Board’s performance on the delivery of NHS Talking Therapies Courses of Treatment for the year to date has improved from 2024/25, with the system delivering above plans in 2025/26. For the full year 2025/26, 31,965 people completed a course of treatment, compared with 30,350 in 2024/25.