Part of 2. 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Well-being and Sport – in the Senedd at 2:35 pm on 5 October 2016.
Mental health spend is actually the largest individual block of spending that we have within the national health service. And you’ll have heard both myself and the previous Minister indicate the reviews that we’ve done on, for example, the ring-fence, to make sure that that’s real, to make sure more money is being spent. And our challenge isn’t to simply say, ‘Let’s look at the money’. Our challenge always is: are we getting the right outcomes, are we getting enough people seen who have real needs, and how do we do that? And, often, it’s more than just health spend as well, because a lot of this is about more general well-being. For example, social prescribing won’t come down as spend in mental health terms, but, actually, it certainly is. In preventative terms, it often is part of the picture. So, I’m committed to continuing to have mental health as a very real priority for what we do in budgetary terms, but also in service delivery and outcome terms as well. So, I look forward to the questions on the challenges that we still have—and I acknowledge we do as well—as we continue to try and reduce waiting times, but also to see a real and objective measure for outcomes rolled across the NHS, and I’m confident we will do within this term.