Counsellors and Psychotherapists

11. Whether his Department plans to improve integration of counsellors and psychotherapists into the mental health workforce.

Counsellors and psychotherapists form an integral part of the NHS mental health workforce, delivering support to people with mental ill health across a range of settings in services for both children and young people and adults. We will publish a refreshed NHS long-term workforce plan to ensure that the NHS has the right people in the right places with the right skills to deliver the care that patients need.

Is there a plan to maintain service provision where psychotherapists and counsellors operating in the charity sector have been hit by eye-watering cost increases as a consequence of the national insurance increase?

As I have said in answers to previous questions, and as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said, there is something of a pattern emerging here: Opposition Members say that they welcome the investment the Government have made, but oppose the revenue-raising measures and refuse to set out whether they would increase taxes or cut services. I still have not heard an answer on that from those Members.