Young People’s Mental Health

Debate between Lord Beamish and Tim Loughton

Thursday 27th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I declare my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I apologise for missing the opening couple of minutes of the speech made by the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes).

I am delighted that we are having this debate, and to be participating in it, for two main reasons, which I am sure you will share, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I know your interest in this matter. First, this is an important subject. It is something that we are failing on, so it is right, proper and beneficial that hon. Members talk about it openly, especially because, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham), young people are much more prepared than ever to come forward with their own stories of their problems and issues, hopefully so that solutions can be found through them.

Secondly, I am delighted to participate in this debate because it is part of the UK Youth Parliament’s work. It is significant that we are giving up mainstream parliamentary time in the main Chamber of the House of Commons to discuss a report by the Youth Select Committee, an offshoot of the UK Youth Parliament. It is a shame that we have to do it in Backbench Business Committee time rather than Government time, but I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood for securing the debate and giving it such an excellent start—this will clearly be a high-quality debate. I take the view—I think that you share this view, Madam Deputy Speaker—that the Youth Select Committee has now taken on such status and stature, with its production of reports of such high quality involving such good research, that not only should the Government produce a formal response to the reports, as they have, but they should give up Government time in this Chamber on an annual basis—just once a year—so that we can formally debate the work of the Youth Select Committee. I have put that idea forward for some time, so I hope that the Whips and Government business managers are listening.

I am a big supporter of the UK Youth Parliament. It was founded during my time in Parliament, and I always try to attend its annual parliamentary sittings, which are a great spectacle. It is always exceedingly frustrating for Members when we return on the Monday and the Speaker inevitably says, “Why don’t you lot behave as well as the UK Youth Parliament members who were here on Friday; they are very smart, very concise, very well behaved, don’t heckle and set an example?” It is a shame that the media coverage of the Youth Parliament sitting is not more extensive because it is a great event for a great organisation, and it is great that we are discussing its work today.

When I was the Minister for children and young people, we produced the “Positive for Youth” document, which was all about promoting that sort of youth engagement. One of the things I most treasure having done is helping the transition of the UK Youth Parliament across to the British Youth Council to secure its future. I pay tribute to all its work over the past few years. It is a mainstream part of the youth voice in this country and in this Chamber.

I was the first witness ever to be called before the Youth Select Committee. It was an awesome and intimidating experience. I was called for its first inquiry back in 2012 along with the then Transport Minister, Norman Baker. We rather too nonchalantly rocked up before this group of young people in the Boothroyd Room. They were exceedingly well-rehearsed and well-researched, and were certainly not taking any BS from anybody. I have appeared in front of Select Committees—mostly the Education Committee—on many occasions, but I have to say that this was the most intimidating experience I ever had as a Minister in front of a Select Committee, and it was fantastic. That shows why the work of this Committee, and this, its fourth report, need to be taken seriously.

This Youth Select Committee report is difficult to distinguish, other than by its cover, from a House of Commons Select Committee report, and I congratulate Rhys Hart and his team on their work on it. They did all the things they should have done: they visited experts and sufferers of mental illness, and took no fewer than 148 submissions from expert witnesses and others—if only all the other Select Committees had as many well-informed and well-researched submissions as it did.

The Youth Parliament also has a substantial democratic endorsement. In 2014, when its priorities and the subject of the Youth Select Committee report were decided upon in the “Make Your Mark” ballot—which includes a debate in this House in the Youth Parliament’s annual sitting—no fewer than 875,000 young people from up and down the country bothered to turn out and vote. Of them, more than 90,000 voted specifically for the subject of mental health services, which is why we are debating this report in the Chamber today. That is a huge democratic mandate.

Every year I hold an event in the House of Commons to present democracy awards to schools in West Sussex, including my constituency, that have achieved a high turnout in the elections that are held every February. Each year the turnout gets higher, so more and more trophies have to be given out, and an ever bigger room has to be booked to accommodate everybody. Last year, one school had a 100% turnout—all its pupils turned out to vote for its UKYP members, which is absolutely fantastic.

This report is a chunky piece of evidence that needs to be appreciated, looked at and, importantly, acted upon. I am delighted that we are giving time to it today, and I am also pleased that the Government produced a formal response to it, whatever we may think about the shortcomings of what they said. That was produced jointly by the then Health Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), and the then Education Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah). Neither of them are still in those ministerial posts, but I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood), to her new position. I am sure she has learned the ropes quickly and that she will continue to do so. We need consistency in our approach to mental health, however, and a much more joined-up approach—and not just between education and health, because there are many other aspects as well.

This subject is clearly important to young people, as is this report, so it should be important to the House and the Government. There are many useful lessons that we can learn.

I am also very frustrated, however. I have been in the House for almost 20 years. I have been shadow Minister for mental health, and I was shadow Minister for children and young people for some nine years, as well as Minister for children and young people. I currently chair the all-party group on children and the 1001 group, which is all about perinatal mental health. I have seen mental health Bills come and go, too, and have been involved in them. I saw the 2011 mental health strategy “No health without mental health”, which was a very important statement about the parity of esteem we need to achieve, although we still have not. In 2014, I saw “Closing the gap: priorities for essential change in mental health”, with specific commitments to improve mental healthcare for children and young people. I saw the rolling out of talking therapies and the improving access to psychological therapies programme. In March 2015, as has been mentioned, we had the mental health taskforce, which produced “Future in mind”. I have seen lots of good work in the Department of Health, in particular, such as that done by my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire, and in February this year the mental health taskforce produced the “Five Year Forward View for Mental Health”. There has been a lot of talk about the importance of mental health and the necessity of achieving parity of esteem but, as the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) rightly said, there is still a very big disparity. And here we are again: we are still here talking about this, and record numbers of children and young people still have mental health problems.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we can have reports, taskforces and recommendations, but the real problem is that mental health is seen as a Department of Health issue, whereas what we actually need is a completely cross-Government approach so that mental health and wellbeing can be part of every single piece of policy development?

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Gentleman is right; he pre-empts a couple of my comments. From my experience as a former Minister—and, I am sure, from his—the term “joined-up government” is a complete illusion. Joined-up government does not happen in practice. On becoming a Minister, one is cocooned in a Department, and instead of having a dialogue with colleagues in the Division Lobby or wherever, a huge wall suddenly comes between you. Trying to get interdepartmental action becomes really frustrating.

I remember setting up something called the youth action group, which consisted of Ministers from nine or 10 Departments and representatives of six major children’s charities. It was co-chaired by the Prince’s Trust and Barnardo’s. The charities came to us with problems—often complex ones—affecting young people. One example related to housing benefit and accommodation for children in care. I cannot remember what the specific problem was, but it involved housing, which was the remit of the Department for Communities and Local Government, and benefits, which were the remit of the Department for Work and Pensions, as well as children in care, who came under the remit of the Department for Education. Normally there was a vicious circle that involved people being pushed from pillar to post. Alas, that committee has not met for the past 15 months or so, but our meetings used to consist of at least six actual Ministers—not just civil servants—from the relevant Departments as well as their officials. We would get Ministers together and ask them to go away and solve the problem.

Mental illness falls into that category, in that it is not simply the remit of the Department of Health or the Department for Education. There are many other implications and knock-on effects that can relate to the underlying cause of somebody’s mental illness problems. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the structure of government needs to be much better. We need taskforces that genuinely cut across Government Departments, but in my experience they will flourish only if they have the buy-in and direct engagement of Ministers at the top. One welcome initiative from the hon. Gentleman’s party was the appointment of a Cabinet-level Minister for mental health. I think that that appointment has slightly gone by the wayside now, but the principle behind it was absolutely right, in that it tried to join up all the relevant Departments at the top table.