Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to section 3.5 of the NHS Operational Planning Guidance 2019-20, what steps his Department is taking to ensure the reduction in CCG administrative budgets does not mean that local areas miss the targets to improve children and young people’s mental health services as set out in the NHS Long Term Plan.

The NHS Long Term Plan commits to grow investment in mental health services faster than growth in the National Health Service budget overall for each of the next five years. This means mental health will receive a growing share of the NHS budget, worth in real terms at least a further £2.3 billion a year by 2023/24. Additionally, the NHS also commits that funding for children and young people’s mental health services will grow faster than both overall NHS funding and total mental health spending. This means that children and young people’s mental health services will for the first time grow as a proportion of all mental health services, which will themselves also be growing faster than the NHS overall. The delivery of this commitment is supported by the annual Mental Health Investment Standard, which requires commissioners to allocate additional growth in funding for mental health.

The intention, also set out in the Long Term Plan, to make further efficiencies in NHS administrative costs is intended to ensure that an increasing share of the NHS budget is invested in frontline services by, amongst other things, simplifying costly and overly bureaucratic contracting processes.