Health and Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Watkins of Tavistock and Lord Layard

Committee stage
Thursday 20th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Layard (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 101B, in my name and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, and the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, is a fundamental amendment to remedy the shocking imbalance between the provision of mental and physical healthcare. As was said in the debate last week, people with mental disorders who receive treatment are a minority—35% of children and 40% of adults—while for people with physical illnesses, the vast majority get treated. This is not parity of esteem; in fact, I think it is one of the greatest cases of discrimination in our public life. There is only one way to remedy it, which is that the funding of mental healthcare has to rise faster than the funding of physical healthcare. In other words, the fraction of NHS funding devoted to mental healthcare has to rise—it is a matter of simple logic. This is such a fundamental point of principle that it should be put into law.

The increase does not of course have to go on for ever, but only until the inequality has been eliminated and mental health is treated like physical health. In the words of the amendment, the rise should continue until

“people coming forward with mental health problems are as likely to be offered treatment as people with physical health problems”,

and, of course, to receive it within a period of time appropriate to their problem. Only then will we have achieved parity of esteem.

The amendment is a statement of principle. As we know, there are always problems of definition and interpretation with statements of principle, but such statements are common in our statute law. This is a sector, in financial terms, as big as the police service, and it is right that there should be legal principles governing it. If we want to secure justice for the sector, it needs a statement of principle. This is a stronger statement than any of those discussed last week, but if this is what we believe, it is what we should say.

The main argument for the amendment, as I have said, is one based on simple equity, but there is also a strong economic argument. Mental illness is mainly a disease of working age, while physical illness is mainly a disease of retirement. Half of all working-age disability and absenteeism is due to mental illness, so when we successfully treat mental illness, the savings to the economy and to the Exchequer are massive, especially when compared with the economic savings from the majority of physical healthcare. These economic savings were a key argument that led to the establishment of IAPT, Improving Access to Psychological Therapies, from 2008 onwards, and they have been verified in what has happened since in that service.

There is also another very important source of savings: savings to NHS physical healthcare. Psychological therapy has been shown to reduce the cost of physical healthcare for people with comorbid physical conditions. This can be seen in a major nationwide controlled trial done recently, which provided IAPT treatments to people with long-term physical conditions such as diabetes, CVD and COPD. This trial found that, within a year, the savings on physical healthcare covered the total cost of the psychological therapy—so the mental health service is saving money for the physical healthcare service. As a result, this approach is now being rolled out nationally.

So mental health is a classic case of spend to save, and extra spending is desperately needed. Some of it would fill the massive gaps in existing services, including for severe mental illness, and some of it would provide services to key groups of people who are barely helped at present, many of whom were referred to earlier in this debate.

First come the tragic children who fall below the CAMHS threshold, who are sometimes assessed and sent back home as not sick enough, but who desperately need help. For these young people, the Government are developing mental health support teams in schools, but the rollout is incredibly slow and the services also need to include a much higher level of expertise.

Then there are millions of people whose lives are wrecked by addiction to drugs, alcohol and gambling and who need psychological therapy. There are the victims and perpetrators of domestic violence, who have already been mentioned, and other forms of violence. So many of our social problems have a strong mental health component. There are good, evidence-based psychological treatments which NICE recommends for these problems, but they are not provided. They should be provided. Extra spending on mental health could massively improve our society.

There is one further point in the amendment. If we spend the money, we need to know what it is achieving. In IAPT we know the progress of 100% of those treated, but in most parts of adult and child mental health services we currently have very little quantitative data on what is being achieved. That has to change, so universal routine outcome measurement should be a reasonable quid pro quo for extra funding, but the extra funding is crucial. It is not enough to talk about parity of esteem. We must have a clear statement of how to recognise it and the funding principles to achieve it.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to this group of amendments with an emphasis on Amendment 101B, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Layard, whom it is a pleasure to follow.

Last night, I went to the ballet and saw “Raymonda”, which has been placed in the context of the Crimea. It reminded me that Florence Nightingale took a hammer to a store-cupboard to get food and blankets for some of her patients because nobody knew what was inside it. She went on to be a leader in sound data for health- care, recognising that without data we could not plan for the future. This amendment emphasises measuring the outcomes of mental health nursing and other mental health interventions in order to ensure that we learn from practice and develop best practice cost-effectively. That is why I have put my name to Amendment 101B.

We need to look at similar patterns for care to those for physical illness. For example, the onset of paranoia and delusions which threaten the safety of an individual or those close to them could perhaps be equated with a suspected cancer where you wait for two weeks for an initial diagnosis. How many people are sectioned under the Mental Health Act for assessment because they have not managed to get an out-patient appointment for assessment earlier? I believe that is an example of discrimination against people with severe mental health problems. If we could get parity of access for assessment, it would be an extremely good beginning. I recognise that there are other physical and mental health problems that are less urgent, but I use that as a comparison.

Yesterday at a meeting concerning mental health reform after the pandemic, the Minister for Care and Mental Health Gillian Keegan and the chief executive of Mind were panellists. At that meeting, it was noted that investment in NHS mental health services currently increases year on year, largely due, I think, to action under the leadership of the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham. It was £11 billion in 2015-16 and is £14.3 billion today and it will continue to increase, including an additional £2.3 billion by 2023-24. It was said yesterday that the Government will ensure ICBs will increase spending on mental health in their area in line with growth in their overall funding allocations to meet the mental health investment standard. To address backlogs, the Government have published their mental health recovery action plan backed by an additional £5 million to ensure that the right support is in place. This illustrates that the Government are committed to the improvement of mental health services. The amendment would place a duty to monitor this investment and evaluate its effectiveness. I hope that the Minister feels able to support the principle behind the amendment and will meet those of us interested in this area to try to find a summary solution to the issues we are raising on parity not only for mental health care but for the care sector that has been outlined so comprehensively by my noble friend Lady Hollins.

All the points that were made by the noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood, concerning osteoporosis could be made for drug-induced psychosis, schizophrenia and other severe mental illness problems. I hope that this Committee will be able to influence an amendment to the Bill that will ensure that the monitoring outlined in the amendment introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Layard, will be taken forward.