Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 15 May 2025 to Question 47803 on Mental Health Services: Recruitment, what his planned timetable is for recruiting 8,500 mental health workers.

As part of our mission to build a National Health Service that is fit for the future and that is there when people need it, we are recruiting 8,500 mental health workers across child and adult mental health services to help ease the pressure on busy services.

We continue to work with NHS England to consider options to deliver this commitment alongside publishing a refreshed workforce plan to deliver the transformed health service we will build over the next decade. There are a wide range of factors that will affect this future growth of the NHS mental health workforce, and we will provide an update in due course.