Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what part his Department plays in the Government's No Health without Mental Health strategy.
The Department designed and developed the mental health strategy, No Health Without Mental Health, published February 2011, which sets out this Government’s overall ambition for mental health.
We legislated for parity of esteem by enshrining in law the equal status of mental and physical health through the Health and Social Care Act 2012.
The Department holds NHS England to account for the quality of mental health services, through the Government’s Mandate to NHS England and measures outcomes for mental health patients through the NHS, Public Health and Adult Social Care Outcomes Frameworks.
As steward of the system, the Department works with its partners to achieve the objectives set out in No Health Without Mental Health.
Early in 2014, we published Closing the gap: priorities for essential change which set out the areas where urgent action was most needed. Progress has already been made in a number of areas:
Our recently published five-year plan, Achieving Better Access to Mental Health Services by 2020, sets out action the government is taking to provide better access to mental health services within the next year, including the first ever national waiting times for mental health services. It also sets out its vision for further progress by 2020.
£40 million in additional funding has been identified to enable change in the current financial year, and a further £80 million will be freed up for 2015-16 to support implementation of waiting times in mental health services.