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 ensure that funding allocated to tackling mental illness is spent on that issue.

The Five Year Forward View for Mental Health Dashboard reports detail on the expenditure made by National Health Service clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) on mental health services. It is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/mental-health/taskforce/imp/mh-dashboard

CCGs are required each year, under the Mental Health Investment Standard (MHIS), to increase their spend on mental health services by a greater amount than the growth in their overall programme allocation. The requirement to meet the MHIS is included within the NHS Operational Planning and Contracting Guidance 2017–2019 and is a key part of NHS England’s operational and financial planning assurance process for 2018/19.