Drug-related Mental and Behavioural Disorder Hospital Admissions

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Wednesday 17th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, to address this, we have asked Dame Carol Black to complete part 2 of a review of drugs to look at treatment for people with substance misuse problems. As I said earlier, we have increased the funding for drug treatment services in England next year, including for additional in-patient detox beds.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

We now have several reports showing that LGBT people have a greater than average incidence of mental health and substance misuse problems. Yet there is no mention of this community in the latest mental health proposals and a complete absence of any mention of this group of people in the NHS plan. What will the Government do to make the leadership of the NHS stop ignoring this particular bunch of taxpayers?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, in April 2019, we appointed Dr Michael Brady as the first national adviser on LGBT healthcare, and we also had the £1 million LGBT health and social care fund to tackle health inequalities experienced by LGBT people. Projects funded by that initiative included Advonet, which developed a self-advocacy course for LGBT people with mental health issues, and training by the Royal College of General Practitioners for GPs and surgery staff on LGBT health and inequality.