The national director for mental health has said that mental health services will always struggle to secure adequate funding, while adding that the sector is no longer the "poor relative" of acute care when it comes to digital investment. The remarks were reported on 19 October.

The comparison has a history. When NHS England set up its global digital exemplar programme, the mental health trusts chosen for it were promised £5m each, half the sum promised to each acute trust. Seven mental health trusts shared £35m of central funding, which they were expected to match from their own budgets. For a sector that started from that position, a claim that the gap has closed is a substantial one.

Concern about the wider funding position has run through the past year. Claire Murdoch left the post of national mental health director in September 2025 after nine years. In her resignation letter, as reported at the time, she said the share of NHS spending going to mental health had fallen the previous year and would fall again. Later in 2025 the Health and Social Care Committee recommended that the Mental Health Investment Standard be kept beyond 2025/26. It also noted that Service Development Funding, a stream used by local commissioners, had stopped being ring-fenced that year. The committee said this could let commissioners spend it on other services and weaken progress towards parity of esteem between mental and physical health.

Against that background, the director's reported comments separate two questions. General funding, in the director's account, will remain short. Digital investment is described as being in a different position. The remarks as reported do not set out how much money is involved, over what period, or which programmes it covers, so the claim cannot yet be checked against the 2017 comparison.

The statement is also notable for who made it. It comes from the person who holds the national post for the sector, in a year when the previous holder left citing concern about investment. It does not say that funding pressure will ease. It places the sector's hopes of improvement in technology, and leaves open how far that can compensate for pressure on the rest of the budget.

Whether the new position holds will show in how future digital funding is divided between mental health and acute trusts. The 2017 split of £5m against £10m per trust offers a measure for that comparison, and the next published allocations will show whether the director's description matches the figures.

‍