Number one, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you. Mr. Speaker, this morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others.

In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister will know that yesterday was World Mental Health Day.

And mental health problems affect one

and four people, but only £1 out of every £8 in CCG budgets is spent on mental health

services. My own CCG, Newcastle Gateshead, I set to cut their budget by a further 1.1%

next year, bringing that total spend to less than 10% of their entire budget.

If party of esteem for mental health is to be achieved, this government will have to match

their words with more strong and stable and ring-fenced funding.

With these cuts and demands increasing, when will the Prime Minister end the talking, promise

to increase in ring-fence funding for mental health and special psychological services?

The Honourable Gentleman is right about the importance that we should be attaching to

the issue of mental health.

And giving that parity of esteem, I I believe is an important step that this government

has taken but we are also doing much more in the area of mental health and in fact

overall more money is going into mental health and we are seeing more people in the

NHS being able to access talking therapies and have treatment for their mental ill

health but what we also need to do is

to look at this issue more widely, which is precisely why I have set up a scheme so that we

will see staff being trained in schools to be able to have better awareness of mental health

problems, to be able to work, know how to deal with those individuals in those schools who are suffering from mental health.

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