Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans the Government has to increase the mental health workforce to achieve the ambitions set out in the NHS Long Term Plan.

Across the National Health Service, expanding the mental health workforce is a top priority. In 2017, we published the Mental Health Workforce plan: ‘Stepping forward to 2020/21: The mental health workforce plan for England’ which sets out our ambition to deliver 21,000 new posts (professional and allied) across the mental health system, with the expectation that 19,000 of these places will be filled by staff employed directly by the NHS.

For the commitments set out in the NHS’s Long Term Plan, my Rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has commissioned Baroness Dido Harding to lead a rapid programme of work to engage with key NHS interests to develop a detailed workforce implementation plan. She will report back in the spring with detailed proposals to grow the workforce rapidly, build a supportive working culture in the NHS and ensure first rate leadership for NHS staff.