Clinical priorities: what are the manifestos promising?

Conservatives 

Will ‘rectify the injustice’ for those with mental health problems by recruiting 10,000 more mental health professionals and ensuring medical staff have a ‘deeper understanding of mental health’. Patients will get a definitive cancer diagnosis within 28 days by 2020.

Labour 

Will set up a new £250m Children’s Health Fund and publish a new childhood obesity strategy within the first 100 days. Mental health budgets will be ringfenced and NICE will be asked to evaluate how best to expand access to psychological therapies.

Liberal Democrats

Waiting times guarantee of under six weeks for talking therapies, and two weeks for a young person after an episode of psychosis. Tackle childhood obesity through mandatory sugar targets for food and drink producers. Minimum unit pricing for alcohol.

SNP

Planning the development of big elective care centres, doing hips and cataracts on an industrial scale. Mental health strategy specifies more investment in child and adolescent mental health services.

Green Party 

More funding for sexual health awareness campaigns. Will bring mental health care in line with physical health care, with mental health awareness training within the public sector and ‘more open dialogue on the issue in wider society’.

Plaid Cymru

A target to save 10,000 lives over 10 years, through a range of public health actions.

UKIP 

Plans to ‘put mental health well-being on the same foot as physical healthcare’ – by increasing funding and introducing 6,000 new clinical psychologists. The party will also cut mental health appointment waiting times from referral to the first appointment – reducing it from 18 weeks to 28 days. 

This is part of a series of articles where Pulse reality checks all the manifesto promises from the main parties and their significance for GPs. Click here for all our Election 2017 coverage.