Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to provide LGBTQ+ relevant mental health services.

We remain committed to the aims of the NHS Long Term Plan, investing at least £2.3 billion of extra funding a year in expanding and transforming mental health services in England by March 2024. This extra funding will enable an extra two million people, including those who identify as LGBT, to be treated by National Health Service mental health services by March 2024.

The funding includes £110 million to expand adult mental health services including NHS Talking Therapies (formerly known as Improving Access to Psychological Therapies). In 2021/22, there were 1.81 million referrals to talking therapies in England, compared to 1.46 million in 2020/21. 1.24 million referrals started a course of treatment within this year.

We also provided an additional £500 million in 2021/22 to accelerate our expansion plans to address waiting times for mental health services, give more people the mental health support they need, and invest in the NHS workforce.

The Advancing Mental Health Equalities strategy published by NHS England in 2020 helps set expectations for providers and commissioners to identify opportunities and drive forwards improvements to address inequalities in access to and experience of mental health services. The strategy supports local systems to tailor services to meet the needs of their local populations, including LGBTQ+ people. This includes improvements to the quality and use of data and information, for example the Equality Data Quality Guidance to help improve the collection of demographic data in the Mental Health Services Dataset, and a range of initiatives to improve diversity and representation in the mental health workforce.