Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what proportion of (a) adults and (b) children on NHS waiting lists for mental health treatment have been waiting for more than one year.

The data is not held in the format requested as a national access and waiting times standard for National Health Service mental health services has not yet been defined.

Currently access and waiting times standards exist for Access to NHS Talking Therapies available at the following link:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/data-collections-and-data-sets/data-sets/improving-access-to-psychological-therapies-data-set;

Early intervention for psychosis services available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/eip-waiting-times/

and Children and young people's eating disorder services available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/cyped-waiting-times/.

NHS England has consulted on the potential to introduce five new waiting time standards for adults and children as part of its Clinically-led Review of NHS Access Standards. These include that children, young people and their families, presenting to community-based mental health services should start to receive care within four weeks from referral. As a first step, NHS England has recently shared and promoted guidance with its local system partners to consistently report waiting times to support the development of a baseline position.