Mental health support (2019)

Response

Please note that the House of Commons only holds information from April 2014 onwards as this was the date that the House’s occupational health appointment system was introduced.

With this information in mind, please find our responses to each of your questions below.

1. Between 2010 and 2019, what has been the yearly budget for mental health services in parliament made available for MPs and staff. These services would include, but not limited to, items such as salary for counsellors, marketing and advertising for mental health provisions, workshops, and other relevant mental health expenditure. Can this information be provided on a spreadsheet that shows the year, the year’s budget, and the categories of expenditure e.g. salary, marketing, etc?
   Some information relevant to your request is held by the House of Commons.
   Please note initially that the Parliamentary Healthy & Wellbeing Service (PHWS) is a service available to Members, Peers, their staff, staff of either House and the Parliamentary Digital Service (PDS). PHWS deals with a wide variety of both physical and mental health and wellbeing issues. Therefore, the funding of mental health services for MPs provided by PHWS cannot be disaggregated from this wider budget.
   However, PHWS are granted a separate annual budget of £50,000 from the House of Commons Members Estimate Committee for the provision of secondary mental health care for MPs.
2. Between 2010 and 2019, how many staff were working within the mental health service in Parliament? Can this be broken down by year by occupation on a spreadsheet e.g. 2011 three, two PAs etc?
   This information is not held by the House of Commons.
   PHWS staff work in all areas of occupational health, which includes providing a broad area of care. They also have responsibility for training and promoting health and wellbeing across the parliamentary estate. Staff members’ work in mental health cannot be disaggregated from their broader role in PHWS.
3. Is Parliament aware of the mental health support provided by political parties and could it disclose what the arrangements for each elected party are? For example, Labour providing weekly counselling for MPs of Green Party investing in mental health workshops? If this cannot be answered, could you instead provide me with information explaining how many MPs have taken time off due to mental health reasons between 2010 and 2019?
   This information is not held by the House of Commons.
   The mental health support provided by political parties is a matter for those parties and the House is not involved. You may wish to consider contacting the parties represented in the House to ask for the information you seek; contact details are available on our Parliamentary website. However, political parties are not public authorities for the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. This means that they are not obliged to respond to requests made under the Act.
   FOI applies to public authorities and both the House of Commons and House of Lords are listed as institutions covered by the Act.  In addition, information held by government offices in relation to ministerial activities and responsibilities will also be subject to the Act’s provisions.  Further information about FOIA and Parliament is available on our website.
4. Between 2010 and 2019, how many MPs were enrolled on any mental health support provided by Parliament?
   Members attending counselling sessions provided by the House will have been recorded as doing so and this information is held by the House of Commons. However, Members using wellbeing services provided by the Houses’ Employee Assistance provider, or receiving confidential psychiatric advice from PHWS staff, is not recorded by the House.
   Whilst the House holds some information relating to your request, the House does not collate statistical information on the use of mental health services provided by the House and the data you require is not held in a central database. To retrieve this information a member of staff would have to check each appointment form relating to Members of the House of Commons since 2014. There have been 1,532 appointments with PHWS from Members, and it is estimated that each file would take approximately 5 minutes to review. Therefore, we estimate that it would take over 127 hours to locate the information you have requested.
   The cost of complying with your request therefore exceeds the appropriate limit for the House of Commons of £600. This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 3½ working days in determining whether the House holds the information, and locating, retrieving and extracting the information. Under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), the House is not obliged to comply with your request and therefore we will not be processing your request further.
   If you were to make a new request for a narrower category of information, it may be that we could comply with that request within the appropriate limit, although I cannot guarantee that this will be the case. For example, you could refine your request to ask for data narrower date range, we may be able to provide you with some information within the appropriate limit, although we could not guarantee this and further exemptions may apply.