Norman Lamb – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Norman Lamb on 2015-11-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what discussions he has had with the Chief Executive of NHS England on introducing new access and waiting time standards for mental health services.

Alistair Burt

NHS England (NHSE) and the National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health published on 3 August 2015, a commissioning guide for clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) that will set out how to implement the access and waiting time standard for children and young people with an eating disorder. The standard will be refined for implementation from 2017–18. From 2017, NHSE will set a minimum proportion of young people referred for assessment or treatment that are expected to receive treatment within the standard’s timeframe.

We expect that the Mental Health Taskforce report and Mental Health Five Year Forward View will set a plan for developing appropriate pathways and we will work with NHSE to agree next steps.

Departmental Ministers meet with the Chief Executive of NHS England regularly and discuss a wide range of issues, including access and waiting time standards for mental health services.

CCGs do not receive a specific allocation for mental health services, but are required to allocate funds as appropriate to all the services that they are responsible for commissioning. For 2015/16, CCGs received increases in allocations in total of 3.7%, though the increase varied for each CCG.

In the planning guidance for 2015/16, NHS England asked that all CCGs increase their spend on mental health by at least as much as their overall increase in allocation.

In total, CCGs have set plans for 2015/16 which reflect an increase in mental health care expenditure which exceeds the increase in their allocation.