Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to Spending Review 2020, what specific steps the Government is taking to scale-up green social prescribing services to help improve mental health outcomes and reduce health inequalities.

Green social prescribing is funded by HM Treasury’s Shared Outcomes Fund and therefore does not form part of the Spending Review 2020. This fund recently awarded £4.27 million to deliver a joint project with the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Natural England, NHS England, Public Health England and the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government to test green social prescribing in multiple pilot locations, run national experimental work to understand its scalability, and deliver a robust project evaluation.