Luciana Berger MP, Labour’s Shadow Public Health Minister, responding to reports on mental health budget cuts:

“These figures are the latest in a long line of broken promises and false economies on mental health from this Tory-led Government.

“For five years Ministers have been promising that mental health would be treated with the same importance as physical health but these figures prove that they have broken that promise. Mental health budgets have been squeezed, spending on children’s mental health services is down by £50 million, and we’ve lost thousands of specialist nurses and hundreds of specialist doctors. As a result, patients are being sent hundreds of miles from home just to get a bed, or aren’t getting any help at all. Twice as many children are turning up in A&E as a result of mental health problems because they can’t get support earlier on and have become so ill.

“The NHS as we know it can’t survive another five years of Tory-led Government. Labour has a better plan to put mental health at the heart of our NHS by improving access to counselling and therapy for children and adults, and bringing together mental health, physical health and social care into one service, to ensure that all their care needs are met. We will invest an extra £2.5 billion each year in the NHS, over and above Tory plans, and recruit 20,000 more nurses, including mental health nurses.”