Part of 2. 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Well-being and Sport – in the Senedd at 2:37 pm on 5 October 2016.
We’ve had this review in the past, and I’m happy to look again at the best way to protect mental health spending to make sure that it is there as a real factor in the minds of people planning and delivering our service. But the budget lines collected within mental health are not the only indicator, as I did indicate in my answer. There’s more to it than just simply saying it’s only 12 per cent on mental health and everything else is physical health. And, of course, the ring-fence isn’t the only indicator of all the money that’s spent. We actually spend more than the ring-fenced amount of money on mental health services. I come back again to my interest in saying, ‘Let’s have a line, in percentage terms, on what we should spend in mental health terms and what we should spend elsewhere’—the challenge should always be: are we getting proper value from the money that we spend, are we delivering against the real needs that our population has, and can we further improve that, bearing in mind that we have a finite resource available to us? That’s why I refer to the work we’re doing on outcomes and the work we’ve done with the third sector alliance, where they have difficult questions for us as well about waiting times, and about outcomes as well, but there’s real development. There is a programme here that is not just about how we manage a diminishing resource and diminishing outcomes, but how we set our sights on what we can do to further improve what we are able to deliver in all areas of mental health spending, but also the whole service as a holistic service for the whole person.