Pledge
“We will recruit an additional 8,500 new staff to treat children and adults through our first term”
Our verdict
Labour claims the workforce has grown significantly since they came to power. Official data does show the workforce is larger, so progress is being made, but we’re unable to confirm the party’s exact figures.
Labour has said that by the next general election, there will be an additional 8,500 staff working to support the delivery of the NHS’s mental health care for children and adults.
There are a number of different roles counted under the NHS definition of the “mental health workforce”, covering areas of work from substance misuse to child and adolescent care and learning disability support, with staff deployed across the NHS in different settings and services.
We have no way of knowing if some roles will be prioritised for recruitment over others, or if recruitment will be conducted across a wide range of areas.
We’re also not entirely certain which mental health workforce roles the government is using to track progress on this target.
We have assumed that the pledge applies only to England and not the devolved nations, as each of these are responsible for their own healthcare systems.
We’ve not been able to confirm details of exactly how progress on this pledge will be measured, though NHS workforce data is published regularly.
When we asked the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) in October 2024 a number of questions about this pledge, it did not provide any further detail on how it would be measured or implemented. The DHSC is understood to be working with NHS England on how best to deliver the commitment.
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In June 2025, the Labour party posted on X that more than 6,700 more mental health workers had been recruited since July 2024—although it didn’t provide a source.
The DHSC confirmed to Full Fact that this data is based on the monthly workforce statistics, but we’ve worked with the Nuffield Trust and can’t recreate Labour’s figure exactly.
The latest data, published in June, shows that there were 159,604 full-time equivalent (FTE) mental health staff working in England in March 2025, up by 7,071 on June 2024—a month before Labour formed a government in July.
There’s also the issue of who exactly they’re counting. This 7,071 figure includes all staff employed in a mental health setting, so that includes managers and infrastructure support.
If we just look at clinically qualified staff—i.e. the people members of the public likely think of when they hear “mental health staff”—we can see that the workforce has grown by only 5,443 FTEs. Although, again, that’s about 1,300 lower than Labour’s figure.
Experts at the Nuffield Trust told us Labour may have made a request to the data publishers to release the total workforce increase for a specific time period. If this is the case, that makes it very hard for us to tell if they’re on track.
We’ve gone to Labour to clarify this. We’ll update this page when we know more.
As we develop this Government Tracker we’re keen to hear your feedback. We’ll be keeping the Tracker up to date and adding more pledges in the coming months.
Progress displayed publicly—so every single person in this country can judge our performance on actions, not words.
Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister – 24 September 2024