Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to tackle the regional variation in the availability of mental health services.

In March 2021, we published the Mental Health Recovery Action Plan, supported by an additional £500 million in 2021/22 to address waiting times for mental health services. This included £15 million for prevention and early intervention activity for mental health in the most deprived local authority areas in England. Funding for mental health services is allocated to systems by NHS England, in line with fair-shared weighted population splits and attributes. Clinical commissioning groups are responsible for the commissioning of mental health services locally.