Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the average NHS waiting times for psychiatric care in July 2021.

The data is not held in the format requested as a national access and waiting times standard for National Health Service mental health services has not yet been defined. Currently, access and waiting times standards exist for Improving Access to Psychological Therapies services and performance data is available at the following link:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/data-collections-and-data-sets/data-sets/improving-access-to-psychological-therapies-data-set;

Early intervention for psychosis services performance data is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/eip-waiting-times/

Children and young people's eating disorder services performance data is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/cyped-waiting-times/

The NHS Long Term Plan committed to invest at least an additional £2.3 billion a year into mental health services by 2023/24. This increased investment will ensure that an additional 345,000 children and young people and 380,000 more adults will have timely access to NHS funded mental health services.