Luciana Berger – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-02-29.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to improve transparency of (a) spending and (b) outcomes in the NHS on mental health.

Alistair Burt

The report of the independent Mental Health Taskforce acknowledged the need for increased transparency on mental health spending and the quality of care that people receive.

We are moving forward the data and transparency agenda and a new dataset for mental health will be published by April this year.

NHS England has already set a principal commitment to achieving mental health parity of esteem. Through its assurance process NHS England will hold individual commissioners to account for increasing spend on mental health in line with their increase in allocations, taking account of the mental health funding that has been received.

We have welcomed the Taskforce’s recommendations for government in the report and will be considering how best to integrate them into our current work programme, as well as new policies as they develop.