This is a House of Commons Committee report, with recommendations to government. The Government has two months to respond.
This is the report summary, read the full report.
Currently, only around one in three people with a mental health need access mental health services, and an estimated 1.2 million people are on the waiting list for community mental health services. From a low base, NHS England (NHSE) has made progress in improving and expanding NHS mental health services over the last five years, particularly in treating more people and setting access standards and the number of people treated by NHS mental health services has substantially increased. However, many problems persist, and there is still much to tackle.
Rising demand for mental health services—particularly among young people, which has more than doubled since 2017—continues to outstrip service provision. The NHS mental health workforce increased by more than 22% between 2016–17 and 2021–22, but staff shortages remain the main threat to further improvement and expansion. Data and information for NHS mental health services—which are vital for managing performance, developing new services and addressing inequalities—also still lag behind that available for physical health services.
Many stakeholders have welcomed the introduction of new access targets and waiting times standards for mental health services, with better performance seen against some of these. However, the standards only cover a minority of people who are referred to mental health services and, despite defining further standards more than a year ago, there are still no plans to roll these out. All this means people are still not be getting the mental health treatment they need when they need it, and places strains on patients, staff and service quality.
In 2011, the government set out its goal of achieving “parity of esteem” between mental and physical health services without setting out what achieving it meant in practical terms. In 2019, when we reported on children and young people’s mental health services, we highlighted the need for the government to define “parity of esteem” clearly, including setting out the criteria it will use to measure progress. The government accepted our recommendation but disappointingly it has still not done so. This is despite NHSE telling us that it would welcome a definition of ‘parity of esteem’, which could encompass parity in funding, waiting times and outcomes, as well as the provision of data and information on services. With the NHS focusing on reducing backlogs for physical health services, we have concerns about how committed national and local NHS bodies and the new integrated care systems are to keeping mental health services and support high up the agenda. In addition, the government has made little progress in improving preventive and public health services for mental health alongside NHS treatment services, despite this being envisaged in its original strategies.