Scandal of the missing millions

Millions of pounds of taxpayers' money that was earmarked to help the mentally ill has been siphoned off to reduce waiting lists and clear hospital debts.

The Government's mental health tsar has been brought in to investigate claims by psychiatrists and mental health carers that as much as £25m has never reached them.

Professor Louis Appleby is understood to have asked healthcare trusts to provide him with specific details of spending to find out where the money has gone. Evidence is emerging that it has been used to pay for such treatments as hip-replacement operations in order to reduce hospital waiting lists.

At the end of last year, ministers announced that more than £75m was being set aside over two years by the Department of Health to improve mental health treatment. The money was supposed to be used for a variety of purposes, including training more than 1,000 extra mental health workers.

mental health provision has already been denounced as a "Cinderella service" by healthcare professionals, psychiatrists and patients.

The earmarking of money for mental health provision was welcomed by charities. However, it has now emerged that only some £50m appears to have reached the target.

Campaigners say the money has gone missing between the Department of Health, the strategic health authorities and primary care groups. Several healthcare trusts are now conducting their own research to find out where the money has gone.

For example, staff at Royal South Hants Hospital, in Southampton, were promised a new crisis-resolution team. The team was even budgeted for, but the money has now vanished from the budget.

David Kingdon, the professor of mental health care delivery at the hospital, said he had emailed colleagues around the country to ask where the money had gone.

"It seems not to have gone into development, although it was earmarked for it, but into waiting lists," he said.

Paul Corry, the spokesman for Rethink, a charity for severe mental illness, criticised the Government for failing to keep a proper check on how money was allocated.

"This Government said that mental health was one of its three main priorities, along with cancer and heart disease," he said. "It's therefore important that pledges about increases in spending do make it to the front line. Nobody will take responsibility."

Marjorie Wallace, the chief executive of Sane, shared his concerns. She said that she had been horrified by recent visits to in-patient wards and had been shocked to discover appalling states of sanitation and the presence of street drugs.

Mrs Wallace said: "We believe that much of the money pledged by the Government has evaporated into debts. The £25m specifically earmarked for improving the condition of wards was totally unrealistic."