Mental Health Services: Finance
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has produced an impact assessment on the potential impact of reducing the proportion of the NHS budget allocated to mental health services.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock
For 2025/26, mental health spending is forecast to amount to £15.6 billion. This represents a significant spending uplift of £320 million in real terms on mental health compared to the previous financial year.
In addition, integrated care boards are forecast to meet the Mental Health Investment Standard over the 2025/26 financial year, meaning that local health services will invest a greater share of their budgets into frontline mental health services.
No formal impact assessment has been made, as mental health spending is forecast to be almost exactly the same as it was for 2024/25, with a small reduction of just 0.07% in the share of recurrent National Health Service spending for 2025/26. This change is driven by additional investment in the NHS to support elective recovery, and by investment to improve general practice and pharmacy services and meet the rising costs of new medicines and medical devices.
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