Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will consider ring-fencing existing levels of funding for mental health services in 2018–19.

The Department does not generally ring-fence budgets within the National Health Service. The Health and Social Care Act 2012 gave clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) the autonomy to make decisions about the health services that best meet the health needs of their population.

They do this based on evidence of patient needs locally. However, NHS England’s Mental Health Investment Standard requires the local NHS to increase mental health investment by the same proportion as overall allocations. This is planned to be met across England as a whole in 2017/18 and 2018/19. For 2018/19 all CCGs will be required to meet the Mental Health Investment Standard and this will be subject to confirmation by their auditors.