Exclusive: Government admits cutting mental health spend share

Mental health services are projected to get 8.71 per cent of all recurrent NHS spending in the 2025-26 financial year, at £15.6bn of the £179.4bn recurrent NHS baseline, HSJ understands.

In 2024-25, according to the same figures, mental health services received 8.78 per cent, which was also down on 9 per cent in 2023-24.

The share is due to reach its lowest total since at least 2022, HSJ understands.

The figures are due to be laid in Parliament by the health and social care secretary this week. He must provide an update each year under the Health and Care Act 2022.

The 2019 long-term plan pledged mental health spend would “grow faster than the overall NHS budget”, but the figures suggest this is no longer being delivered.

Data shows the share has risen gradually since 2022, and previous HSJ analysis suggests it has risen since 2015.

Spending commitments made in the long-term plan ended last year, and the new government has shown limited commitment to mental health services, instead making tackling elective acute waiting lists its top priority.

Ministers came close to ditching the mental health investment standard, which requires each integrated care board to increase MH spending in line with total spending growth; and several mental health priorities were cut from 2025-26 planning guidance. They include: increasing access to adult community mental health and perinatal mental health; ensuring people with severe mental illness or a learning disability receive a physical health check; and dementia diagnosis targets.

A plan to reduce community waiting lists was also ditched, despite spiralling waits for children wanting diagnosis and treatment for neurological concerns.

NHSE was last year working on a new five-year plan for mental health, with a focus on rebalancing capacity between hospital and community, but it is unclear if it will now ever be published.

Wes Streeting said in a statement to the Commons today the share was due to fall in 2025-26, which he said was “because of significant investment in other areas of healthcare” some of which will “have secondary benefits for mental health care”.

”I am committed to the mental health investment standard [and] we expect all integrated care boards to meet the MHIS in 2025-26”, he said.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “This government is increasing investment in mental health care by an extra £320m in real terms, meeting the Mental Health Investment Standard.”

Updated at 1.30pm on 27 March to new DHSC figures, and to add part of Commons statement.