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 prioritise mental health and wellbeing in the work place.

The Government responded to Thriving at Work: Stevenson/Farmer Review of mental health and employers in the command paper ‘Improving Lives: The Future of Work, Health and Disability’ which was published on 30 November 2017. The joint Department for Work and Pensions and Department of Health and Social Care Work and Health Unit is now overseeing progress across 40 recommendations that range from short term deliverables to longer term reform.

Its central recommendation identified the need for employers to adopt a comprehensive set of mental health standards. The Government is committed to working with the authors of the review and key stakeholders across the public, private and voluntary sectors to ensure that employers of all sizes act to implement the core and enhanced standards and help them, and their employees, realise the benefits of healthy, inclusive workplaces.

Following the Prime Minister’s acceptance of the recommendations that apply to the Civil Service and NHS England as major employers, both organisations have made progress in implementing these. The National Health Service is implementing the mental health standards through the new single NHS Workforce Health and Wellbeing Framework, which was published on 16 May 2018 and shared with NHS organisations.

The Civil Service has benchmarked all main Government departments and their agencies/non-Departmental Public Bodies against the core and enhanced mental health standards to identify best practice and areas requiring further action.