Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to increase the budget for mental health services for children and young people as part of the NHS long-term plan.

Implementing the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health, published by NHS England in 2016, sets out the planned expenditure for mental health through to 2020/21. We are making an additional £1.4 billion available in cash terms in order to transform services, which includes our ambition for an additional 70,000 children and young people a year to receive access to specialist mental health services by 2020/21.

Clinical commissioning group (CCG) spending on children and young people’s mental health increased by 20% from £516 million in 2015/16 to £619 million in 2016/17. The latest refresh of the National Health Service mandate now requires all CCGs to meet the Mental Health Investment Standard, which requires areas to increase mental health funding by at least the overall growth in their allocation each year. Our joint health and education Green Paper aims to further improve provision of services in schools and colleges, bolster links between schools, colleges and the NHS and pilot a four week waiting time. This is available at the following link:

The Government announced a new five-year budget settlement for the NHS in June 2018, which will see funding grow on average by 3.4% in real terms each year. This will mean the NHS budget will increase by over £20 billion in real terms by 2023-24 compared with today.

This additional funding will underpin a 10-year plan to guarantee the future of the NHS for the long term.

NHS leaders are currently developing the long-term plan and, as such, no decision has yet been taken on the share of funds to be allocated to mental health services for children and young people under the multi-year financial settlement. However, the Government has been clear that significantly improving access to good mental health services is one of the principles it expects to underpin the long-term plan.

The plan is currently in development and will be published later in the year.