Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to promote mental health services and counselling in increase the take-up of such services.

We continue to expand access to talking and psychological therapies through the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme. IAPT services are promoted through Every Mind Matters, an online platform which contains resources to help people look after their wellbeing and mental health and local services can be located through NHS.UK.

Data from 2019/20 shows that there were 1.69 million referrals to talking therapies in England and 1.17 million people started a course of treatment within this year. The NHS Long Term Plan commits to ensuring that a total of 1.9 million adults will be able to access IAPT services by 2023/24.