Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when he plans to set out a timeframe for the reduction of mental health waiting times.

The long waits for mental health services are being driven by increasing demand in a system in desperate need of change.

The Government is already responding by delivering new and innovative models of care in the community. As part of this, we have launched six neighbourhood adult mental health centres that are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to bring together community, crisis, and inpatient care.

NHS England’s Planning Guidance for 2025/26 makes clear that for this year, to support reform and improvements, we expect all providers to reduce the variation in children and young people accessing services and improve productivity.

We are also improving data quality, so we can support providers to understand the demand across their areas. Since July 2023, NHS England has included waiting time metrics for referrals to urgent and community-based mental health services in its monthly mental health statistics publication, to help services to target the longest waits.