Health secretary Wes Streeting has delivered a statement to the House of Commons in which he confirmed that funding for mental health has fallen as a proportion of NHS spending in England.

While there has been a real terms increase of £140m, this amounts a 3.2% reduction in share of spending from last year. Streeting’s statement makes this seem smaller by expressing it as a drop from 8.68% to 8.40% of the total.

This spending reduction comes despite confirmation that one in five people aged 16-64 (22.6%) in England now have a common mental health condition, a 20% increase since 2014. This rises to one in four among young people.

Mental health problems are the leading health condition among young people out of work.

Mark Rowland, chief executive at the Mental Health Foundation, said:

Poor mental health is at record highs, including millions of children and young people on waiting lists for treatment or out of work with mental health problems without adequate support to return to the workforce.

This is a human and economic catastrophe, costing the UK at least £118bn a year. In the midst of a national mental health crisis, a cut to the share of spend for mental health raises real concerns about the government’s commitment to mental health.

We support essential NHS reforms to focus on early intervention and prevention (such as Mental Health in School Teams) as well as a focus on Neighbourhood health centres. However, a reduction in spend relative to other areas of health spend undermines this effort. We wouldn’t accept rising cancer rates and falling share of spend and we shouldn’t for mental health.

Without an effective, co-ordinated ‘invest to save approach’, the mental health crisis will only get worse. It will continue to cost the UK billions of pounds, and millions of people will continue to suffer the consequences of preventable mental health problems.

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