Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 8 November 2016 to Question 51834, where NHS England's evaluations of community mental health services are available; to what extent those evaluations were considered in relation to the minimum level of expected spending set as a result of the Mental Health Investment Standard; and if he will undertake to increase that expected level of spending.

NHS England has not published separate evaluations of community mental health services.

NHS England published the Five Year Forward View Mental Health Dashboard in October which sets out a series of indicators that will be used to determine key areas of performance and outcomes. These indicators will include monitoring National Health Service spending on adult and children and young people’s mental health. NHS England will also use the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) Improvement and Assessment Framework to assure CCGs plans for increasing their spending on mental health.

The minimum level of expected mental health spending is a calculation based on the Mental Health Investment Standard definition, requiring that CCGs increase their annual spend on mental health in line with their individual annual programme allocation growth.

This calculation does not take account of the operational performance and evaluation of specific mental health programme areas like community mental health. However, in deciding their planned spend, CCGs are required to take account of national operational and clinical targets as well as local needs based assessment for specific services.