Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure adequate local provision of mother and baby mental health units for people in West Lancashire constituency.

The Ribblemere Mother and Baby Unit located in Chorley, Lancashire is one of four new specialist eight-bed mother and baby units opened as part of the delivery of the Five Year Forward View commitments for perinatal mental health services. It opened in 2018 and is one of the 19 mother and baby units in England.

The NHS Long Term Plan commits to increasing access to evidence-based care for women experiencing moderate/complex–severe mental health problems, to benefit an additional 24,000 women per year by 2023/24, in addition to the extra 30,000 women getting specialist help by 2020/21.