Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has plans to introduce waiting time standards for adults accessing treatments in secondary mental health services.

In line with its commitments in the Long Term Plan, NHS England will be testing four-week waiting times for adult and older adult community mental health teams, with selected local areas. This will help build NHS England’s understanding of how best to introduce ambitious but achievable improvements in access, quality of care and outcomes. Clear standards will then be set for patients requiring access to community mental health treatment and rolled out across the National Health Service over the next decade.

Waiting time standards are already in place for Early Intervention in Psychosis. 76.2% of patients with first episode psychosis started treatment within two weeks in November 2018. Performance is above the waiting time standard, which will increase from 50% of patients in 2017/18 to 60% by 2020/21 as part of the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health, and is 53% in 2018/19.