Mental Health

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

I agree with my hon. Friend. We need to ensure that the systems are in place in local communities to provide people with the support they require. Care in the community is a great concept if that care exists. It exists more in some places than in others.

I will not read out all the names on my list, but they show that civil society is alive and well. They are not statutory organisations; they are founded and run by people who wanted to reach out and do something about a problem that was relevant and prevalent in their community. I am full of admiration for them.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is being very generous. Like other Members, I pay tribute to him for his work on this issue. Before he moves on, I want to touch on the important point about employment. A constituent has written to me to say that employers need to be far more open to the idea of encouraging their employees to talk about these issues and support them in times of need. The loss to companies could be greatly reduced if they were able to support employees through times of mental fatigue and mental illness. Does he agree?

[Mr Walker]

Absolutely. A lot of good points are being made this afternoon and that is another one. BT and Legal & General are doing a huge amount of work on this. BT does it because it is a decent employer, but also because it wants to hold on to some of its top performers who make a difference to the business. It therefore makes sense to support people and ensure they can stay in work.

We have a fabulous civil society doing wonderful things. The great thing about the area of mental health—it is not all doom gloom; far from it—is the diversity of provision. There are a lot of people out there thinking about different ways of doing things, ways that work for the particular communities they serve. That is to be applauded and promoted. We need to support organisations that provide services that meet the needs of specific groups and their community.

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[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), whom I would call my hon. Friend.

I congratulate the Backbench Business Committee and the sponsors of this debate. Remarkably, this is the second debate on this subject in less than a year. I think we should have one every year in order to raise issues that affect many in the House and many of our constituents. Our last debate was on 14 June 2012, when I spoke about my depression and the hon. Member for Broxbourne spoke about his struggle with mental illness. We were both a little wary about what the reaction would be, but it has been nothing but positive, to the extent that he and I have become the Eric and Ernie of the mental health conference circuit. I leave it to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and the House to discern which of us is Eric and which is Ernie. I have received well over 1,000 e-mails and letters, and I think one was negative, but so what? As I said last time, if people did not like me before I spoke last year, they are not going to like me now.

The most remarkable thing for me is that some people I thought I knew well have told me about their own mental illness. I want to pick out three. I will not name any individuals, and I pick them out only to demonstrate that mental illness and depression are equal opportunity conditions. It is not determined by social status, education or what someone does in life. The first was a chief executive of a large council whom I have know for many years. If she was here today, hon. Members would think her a confident and forthright individual, but speaking to her after the debate, I learned that she suffered terribly from post-natal depression.

The second person was the chief officer for a large European defence company. I am sure that some people in the House have met him several times. He is the last person hon. Members might think suffered from mental illness but, as he explained to me, 10 years ago he suffered from a bad bout of depression. The third person, remarkably, is a retired general I know. Others in the House will know him. I will not mention his name, but again he is not someone we might think suffered from mental illness. I pick out those three to demonstrate my point. These are not weak individuals or failures in life, but confident individuals, and had they not told me, I would not have known, and neither would anyone else, apart from their immediate families.

I want to give another example. I was on Chester-le-Street in my constituency one Saturday morning. I was walking down the street and a lady, perhaps in her late 50s, early 60s, came up to me and said, “Mr Jones, can I thank you for what you said on mental illness?” I said, “Thanks very much.” She said, “I’m a recovering alcoholic who had 10 years of depression, but now, with the proper support, I am leading a good, constructive family life.” Normally, if I had walked past her in the street, I would not have thought that this well-dressed, middle-class lady had suffered from mental illness. That reinforced the point that unlike a broken leg, for example, we cannot see mental illness. Every day we pass people in the street or working with people—people we might know very well—who have suffered from mental illness or who has a family member who has suffered from it.

[Ian Austin]

What my hon. Friend is saying illustrates how important the speeches that he and the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) made were. The key point is that despite the number of sufferers who battle against these problems at some point in their lives, there is still a huge amount of stigma attached to them. That is why debates such as this are so important. On his point about health, it is quite right that the Government and public health organisations do so much on smoking, weight loss and reducing alcohol intake to improve health and well-being, but why does he think so little is said publicly, or by health organisations generally, to raise the problems of mental health?

[Mr Jones]

That is our great challenge, and not just for the present Government. We did a lot in the last Government to recognise the problem. I pay particular tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), who championed IAPT—improving access to psychological therapies—services, for example, but part of the problem is cultural. We do not talk about these issues in this country. I think that is changing—I will come to the stigma in a minute—but for anyone who has suffered from a mental illness or who has a family member who has, there is a sense of shame. There should not be, but there is a sense in which talking about it means that those people are failures, when I would argue the opposite. In many cases it is a sign of strength. With the right support, people can function normally, work perfectly normally and have a perfectly happy and productive family life.