Mental health support (2019)

Response

Please note that our response only deals with the issue of mental health and well-being assistance sought for which the House of Commons is responsible. Some of the issues that relate to Peers and their staff are the responsibility of the House of Lords, which is a separate public authority for the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act. You may wish to consider forwarding your request to them. Requests for information relating to the House of Lords should be directed to FOILORDS@parliament.uk.

1. How many

• Members of Parliament
• Peers
• House of Commons staff
• House of Lords staff
• the staff of MPs
• the staff of Peers

sought assistance from PHWS for mental health and wellbeing issues in 2016, 2017, 2018 – and how many so far this year?

We understand your request to be for information about the listed sets of people who have sought assistance for mental health issues.

Some information is held by the House of Commons.  We hold records detailing the number of general appointments with PHWS for House of Commons staff and for Members.  However, the only way to disaggregate the number of appointments for mental health issues, for the purpose of your request, would be to manually check each appointment form and file.  Since 2016 there have been 7,608 appointments for House of Commons staff and 1,197 appointments for Members of Parliament and it is estimated it would take at least 5 minutes to review each appointment in order to retrieve the information you seek.

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 you request to ask for a significantly 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.

Information on the number of appointment made by Members' staff is not held as staff only use the drop-in service in located the Lower Waiting Hall.

As stated above, the House of Commons does not hold data for Members of the House of Lords (Peers) and their staff.

2. How many

• Members of Parliament
• Peers
• House of Commons staff
• House of Lords staff
• the staff of MPs
• the staff of Peers

sought assistance from Health Assured's Employee Assistance Programme for personal issues (i.e general pastoral care not necessarily related to mental health) in 2016, 2017, 2018 – and how many so far this year?

And

3. How many

• Members of Parliament
• Peers
• House of Commons staff
• House of Lords staff
• the staff of MPs
• the staff of Peers

sought assistance from Health Assured's Employee Assistance Programme for mental health and wellbeing in 2016, 2017, 2018 – and how many so far this year?

This information is not held by the House of Commons.

Information on the number of requests made to Health Assured's Employee Assistance Programme relating to personal issues and mental health and wellbeing is not held by the House of Commons. This information is processed by Health Assured, which is separate to the House.

Further, it may help you to know that whilst the Health Assured Employee Programme's helpline has been open to all the aforementioned since November 2018, we only hold details of the total number of calls made by all users of this service, and specific calls cannot be disaggregated from this data. To ensure that users are provided with a confidential service, this information is processed by Health Assured and never passed to the House of Commons. The latest statistics on the number of calls that the Health Assured has received up until April 2018 is available on the parliamentary website.

4. How many

• Members of Parliament
• House of Commons staff
• House of Lords staff
• the staff of MPs
• the staff of Peers.
• Peers

sought face-to-face counselling sessions from the aforementioned service in 2016, 2017, 2018 – and how many so far this year?

Information on the number of face-to-face counselling sessions requests made by Members and their staff and by Parliamentary staff to Health Assured's Employee Assistance Programme is not held by the House of Commons. This information is processed by Health Assured, which is separate to the House.

Further, as mentioned above, whilst the Health Assured Employee Programme's helpline has been open to all the aforementioned since November 2018, we only hold details of the total number of calls made by all users of this service, and specific calls cannot be disaggregated from this data. To ensure that users are provided with a confidential service, this information is processed by Health Assured and never passed to the House of Commons.