Mental Health Services

Thursday 28th April 2016 Lords Chamber

Question

11:06

Asked by

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment has been undertaken of the likely impact on the quality of mental health care of removing mental health quality premium measures from NHS England’s Quality Premium Guidance for 2016-17.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Prior of Brampton) (Con)]

My Lords, the quality premium for 2016-17 enables clinical commissioning groups to choose three local priorities, including from a menu of 17 mental health indicators. Given that mental health is still part of the scheme, NHS England has not assessed the effect of removing it. The Government have invested more than ever in mental health. Spending is estimated to have increased to £11.7 billion, and in January we announced almost £1 billion of extra investment.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

I thank the Minister for his Answer, but I confess that I am left genuinely perplexed by the decision to drop the national level financial incentive for commissioners locally to improve mental health care. The four national measures account for 70% of the quality premium, which is worth up to £217 million. Relegating mental health to the very long list of 80 indicators from which local commissioners can choose only three seems no substitute. How does that downgrading of mental health in the quality premium scheme square with the Government’s oft-repeated commitment to ensure equality between physical and mental health?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, this year NHS England has chosen primary care, cancer and antibiotic prescribing to be the three key parts of the national quality scheme but, as the noble Baroness has said, 30% is determined locally, of which 17 indicators are related to mental health. NHS England proposes to include a mental health indicator in its national scheme in 2017-18. The point about the national schemes is to provide incentives and they will change from one year to another. If they are the same every year, they will cease to be incentives.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister will know that the general record on mental health has been very poor over the past few years. We are far away from parity of esteem; indeed the National Audit Office has commented on this. There is widespread concern within the circles involved in mental health services that, despite what Ministers say, the NHS itself and NHS England are not committed to parity of esteem. Leaving mental health out of the national priorities sends a signal to the NHS that, despite what Ministers say, in the end it is not important. I wonder whether the Government would reconsider this issue and give new instructions to NHS England on it.

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, I find it hard to believe that anyone can think that mental health is not a key priority for this Government, given that we have promised to spend another £1.4 billion on children and young people’s mental health and a further £1 billion a year on adult mental health, along with accepting the findings of the Farmer report in full. I assure the House that mental health remains an absolute priority for the Government.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, quite frankly, our experience is that a crisis is taking place, especially in children’s mental health services. Has the Minister visited these centres to see whether that money is being delivered? Our experience is that it is not.

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

I think there is a general recognition that mental health has been the Cinderella service of the NHS for generations and that, within that, mental health provision for children and young people has been a Cinderella service within the Cinderella service. We are putting a great deal of resource into it. Yes, I have visited a number of mental health care trusts. We all know at first hand that the service is highly underfunded, which is why we have committed to spend this extra money on it over the next five years.

[Lord Harrison (Lab)]

My Lords, is not the underlying problem for the health service that we simply do not have the quantum of money and resources available to deal with the many challenges, of which mental health is one? The Minister will well know that diabetes, which is threatening to explode out of all recognition, is one of the others. We need more resources.

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

It is partly a question of resource, although I point out to the noble Lord that the country that spends the most money on healthcare and has the worst results is America. It is not just a question of resource. It is how we spend it as well as the amount of money.

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

I am sure that the Minister well understands that people working in mental health see this as a very negative signal, given all that has been said before. Will he answer two questions, please? First, what would he say to people working in mental health to reassure them that the Government are still giving this level of priority to mental health? Secondly, as he has already said, these quality premiums are intended to incentivise quality. What impact does he think removing mental health from the national priorities —the national quality premium—will have on quality in mental health?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

What I would say to people in the NHS is that the Government are committed to spending a lot more money—more money than has ever been spent before on mental health—so we are putting our money where our mouth is. We are the Government who signed up, with the Liberal Democrats, to putting parity of esteem in law in the 2012 Act, and we are absolutely committed to doing that. There is no ground for thinking that we are deprioritising mental health. The quality premium that NHS England uses to focus the attention of CCGs will change every year. It had mental health in it last year; it had other issues in it this year; and I hope that it will have mental health in it next year.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

Parity of esteem has a very specific meaning and it is good news that some extra money has been coming into mental health services but, until mental health is a real priority and there is equal funding, particularly to take pressure off the acute sector, there remains a problem. Can the Minister please confirm that mental health will continue to benefit from additional funding next year, given the priorities set out in the mental health five-year forward view? It would be really reassuring to the House to know that at least there was continuing additional funding available.

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

I assure the House that, on the funding that the Government have agreed for children’s and young people’s mental health and adult mental health—in the light of the Prime Minister’s announcement in January, but particularly in the light of Paul Farmer’s report that came out six weeks ago —we are fully committed to meeting those obligations.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not think that the House in any way doubts the Minister’s personal commitment to additional expenditure on mental health. However, he will be aware if he has been listening to questions in this House over the past few weeks that the issue of mental health provision has come up, for example, on the Question of children caught up in separation yesterday, and in relation to asylum seekers and the prison population. One of the key resources in short supply is mental health practitioners. What are the Government doing to encourage more people coming into the health professions to regard mental health practice as a priority for their careers, not just a government priority?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

The noble Baroness makes an interesting point. There are no short-term fixes for workforce issues. It is generally recognised that there is a shortage of people choosing psychiatry when they come through their foundation year 2 as junior doctors. We are concerned about that. There has been a significant increase in the counsellors used for delivering IAPT courses, but we are cognisant of the fact that we have to keep a very close eye on that.