Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that increased funding for mental health services is (a) improving patient outcomes and (b) reducing waiting times.

All integrated care boards met the Mental Health Investment Standard for 2023/24, meaning that their investment in mental health services increased in line with their overall increase in funding for the year. Information for 2024/25 is expected to become available later this year.

NHS England publishes new waiting time metrics in line with the clinical review of mental health access standards. These are published monthly via the mental health services data set, which delivers robust, comprehensive, nationally consistent, and comparable person-based information for children, young people, and adults who are in contact with mental health services.

This dataset is also used to inform the NHS Mental Health Dashboard and provides transparency in assessing how National Health Service mental health services in England are performing, alongside technical details explaining how mental health services are funded and delivered.