The Liberal Democrats have pledged more than £2bn of extra funding for mental health over the next parliament on top of what has already been announced in the coalition budget. The plans will be outlined in the party’s “manifesto for the mind”, which they will launch on Tuesday.

The Lib Dem leader, Nick Clegg, said that equality for mental health was the “liberal mission” and that the party had secured more than £1bn in the coalition budget for mental health services for children and young people. “But we cannot and must not rest there,” he said.

The funding commitment would include £250m over the next parliament for pregnant women and mothers dealing with depression, including the creation of eight new mother and baby units providing inpatient care and 40 new community services to help women adjust to life with their new baby.

Clegg said that parity of esteem for mental health was something he had been campaigning for since he came into politics. He spoke about a couple in his constituency who came to see him about their teenage daughter, who had an eating disorder. “She had finally been given quite good effective treatment and then she turned 18 and when you turn 18, as you know, you get taken out of adolescent and children’s mental health services and put into adult mental health services – and she was abandoned,” he said.

The Liberal Democrats are making the announcement on the second day of the formal general election campaign. The party has included mental health on the first page of its election manifesto, a place reserved for policies they are determined to implement if they return to government.

Clegg said the Conservative party had changed since his party entered coalition with them in 2010, adding that it had never been sincere about its environmental policies. “If you go back to the Conservative party of 2010, they were all husky-hugging. They professed an interest in civil liberties, they professed an interest in the environment, they professed an interest in being a centrist Conservative party,” he said.

But while there was a wing of the Conservative party that believed in civil liberties, “small-C Conservatives”, the leadership of the party was uninterested. “It has been an almost non-stop struggle for me to try and remind the Conservatives that they used to care about civil liberties. They spend most of their time in the Home Office trying to trash them.”



A poll from the Daily Mail and ComRes on Monday had the Liberal Democrats on 9% of the vote, behind Ukip, which was on 12%. The Conservatives were up one point to 36%, while Labour were down three points to 32%.

Nick Clegg refused on Monday to rule out supporting Conservative plans for a referendum on Britain’s EU membership if the Liberal Democrats go into coalition with the party after May’s general election. Asked whether his party would do what it could to stop a referendum if it went into coalition, Clegg said: “You can’t ask me to do more than set out my stall and publish our manifesto, as we will, and then the British people can decide between the different propositions put forward.”

Speaking to the BBC’s Today programme, he continued: “What you’re asking me to do, of course I can’t [do]. I can’t stare in a crystal ball and tell you how the Conservative position on Europe will change. Get someone from the Conservative party to talk about the Conservative party position.”

David Cameron has said that an in/out referendum by the end of 2017 would be a “red line” for the Conservatives in any coalition negotiations, meaning a Lib Dem refusal to back the idea would spell the end of hopes for a second Tory-Lib Dem coalition. Senior Lib Dem sources have speculated that the issue could split the party if coalition talks with the Conservatives were held.

Tuesday’s Liberal Democrat manifesto commitment includes an additional £250m a year in 2016-17 and 201718, rising to £500m a year after that. Added to the existing money for mental health announced in the budget, that would make a total of £3.5bn over the parliament. The party says it will pay for the funding commitment with the £250m for NHS England announced in the budget.

The remaining funding will be raised through increasing the required shareholdings to qualify for entrepreneurs’ relief from capital gains tax from 5% to 10% and reducing the annual exemption to £2,500, something the Liberal Democrats estimate would raise about £700m.

Funds would also be raised by abolishing the shares-for-rights scheme, which the party says would raise about £200m. The rest of the money would come from the increased NHS budget already announced by the Liberal Democrats.