Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the causes of the fall in real-terms funding per child for low-level mental health services in 60 per cent of local authorities in England given the £226 million reported as planned spending for 2018/19.

Local authority funding is a matter for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

The Department recognises the need to increase funding for National Health Service mental health services for children and young people. The planned spend by NHS clinical commissioning groups on children and young people’s mental health for 2018/19 is £727.3 million. This represents an increase of around 40% from the spend in 2015/16, which was £516 million.