Mental Health

Lord Bradley Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bradley (Lab)]

My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, on securing this very important debate and on her very effective and wide-ranging opening contribution to it. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Suri, on his excellent maiden speech. He will clearly be a very welcome addition to your Lordships’ House.

Mental health has rightly risen up the political agenda significantly in recent years. It is timely to take stock of the current issues and policy developments that have taken place during this Parliament. I declare my interest as a trustee of the excellent Centre for Mental Health, which undertakes superb work in this area.

Let us first consider further some background facts and figures. I make no apologies for repeating what many noble Lords have already mentioned. Mental health problems affect 23% of the population at any one time, the most prevalent of which are depression and anxiety at 17% of the total. As we have heard, the economic and social costs of mental ill health are estimated to be £105 billion annually. As the NHS Five Year Forward View points out, this is roughly the cost of the entire NHS budget. Mental ill health accounts for 23% of all ill health—more than heart disease, cancer and diabetes—and causes as much ill health among working-age people as all physical illness combined. Some 10% of children aged five to 15 have a mental health problem. Three-quarters of people with depression receive no treatment at all. A third of people with a long-term physical illness also have a mental health problem. This costs the NHS an extra £10 billion in extra prescriptions, hospital admissions and more expensive treatments.

As we have heard, nine out of 10 prisoners have a mental health problem, and mental health research funding—as we have heard again—is appallingly low. As the organisation MQ points out, the scale of mental health research is not proportionate to the burden of disease. The spend on mental health research is just 5.5% of the total research spend in the UK, despite the fact that mental health problems, as we have heard, affect around one-quarter of the population in any one year. MQ further points out that a major challenge in the mental health funding landscape is that, in contrast to the other major health conditions, public funding of mental health research is virtually non-existent. For every £1 that the Government spend on cancer research, the general public invest £2.75; for heart and circulatory problems it is £1.35. For mental health research, the figure is 0.003p. I am not arguing against such public investment in other disease groups; I am simply putting mental health research in that broader context. Like the noble Lord, Lord Patel, I look forward to the Minister’s response on that point.

Against that backdrop, what have been some of the key policy pledges made by the Government on behalf of those suffering with mental health problems, and what appears to be the current position on each? First, there are new access standards for mental health, which are clearly welcome. Announced in October 2014, they include, from April 2015, waiting-time standards for improved access to psychological services, and early intervention in psychosis services. The Department of Health’s five-year plan to improve access to mental health care pledged to follow this up with further standards, for example in urgent care and in child and adolescent mental health services. This must be completed to ensure that we have genuine parity of access to mental health care, as we do to urgent and elective care for a range of physical illnesses. There must also be comparable entitlement to NICE-approved interventions to ensure that there is no compromise on quality. Such entitlements are essential to delivering parity of esteem. However, I noted carefully the views of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, on that point.

Secondly, on mental health care funding, data suggest, as we have heard, that NHS spending on mental health services has fallen in real terms each year from 2011 to date. This is putting services under great pressure, leading to disinvestment in effective interventions such as crisis resolution and home treatment, and placing extra pressure on hospital beds. It is even leading to bed closures where there is often already underprovision. Local campaigns, such as those in Waveney and other areas of the country, have been initiated to protect vital local mental health services. I would be grateful for the Minister’s views on that situation, as well as for his view on the Royal College of Nursing’s view that there are now 3,300 fewer posts in mental health nursing and 1,500 fewer beds than in 2010. Planning guidance recently published by NHS England asked CCGs to secure real-terms increases in mental health spending for 2015-16. It is vital that this is implemented and that accurate records are kept of spending on mental health services for adults and children.

Thirdly, on crisis care, the crisis care concordat was published a year ago, as we have heard, and is welcome. It sets out the standards expected in all local areas. The deadline for localities to produce crisis care declarations has now passed. These should be followed up with local action plans to implement agreed measures. The tracking map shows that all areas have now made declarations but that few have action plans to go with them. It is unclear how local organisations will be held accountable for achieving progress and how it will be monitored. I hope the Minister will be able to elaborate on that point.

Next comes liaison and diversion, in which I have a particular interest. NHS England recently announced the expansion of the national programme of liaison and diversion services to cover half the population of England. This is welcomed but we must ensure that it is extended nationwide by the committed-to date of 2017. However, there is also a need for CCGs and other commissioners to commission services to which people can be diverted to make the investment in such services as effective as possible. I hope that the Minister can reassure us on that point as well.

Finally, on employment, the Government have recognised that the Work Programme is not offering adequate help to people with mental health problems, and they have invested in a pilot to trial the adaptation of the individual placement and support approach for people with common mental health problems. This work needs to inform the future of the Work Programme. I also commend the report that has been mentioned, published on Tuesday, on addressing the serious inequality of employment outcomes. It makes very clear recommendations on how to improve employment opportunities for people with severe mental health problems, such as schizophrenia, about which the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, spoke so eloquently earlier.

In spite of those initiatives, which are clearly welcomed, there remain many weaknesses and concerns. We have already talked about the real-terms reduction in funding and about the fact that people with mental health problems have been adversely affected by continued weaknesses in the work capability assessment and, in some cases, by the use of benefit sanctions. We have heard about schools being given little support in promoting mental health and the removal of well-being from Ofsted inspections. We have also heard of the major concerns in children’s mental health services, which have experienced particularly large cuts. Last year, two-thirds of councils and three-quarters of CCGs cut or froze CAMHS spending. A recent Parliamentary Answer showed that the aggregate PCT/CCG expenditure on CAMHS fell in real terms from £758 million in 2008-09 to £717 million in 2012-13, and I suspect that it has continued to fall. The position is exacerbated by cuts in youth services, many of which have a positive impact on well-being and prevent the emergence of later problems.

Finally, what should be done to ensure that these situations are addressed? This afternoon we have heard many good examples of new initiatives. We must continue to explore ways of making the NHS constitution fairer, including a wider range of access standards and entitlements to NICE-approved interventions. We must consider revising payment systems for all mental health services to put mental and physical health on an equal footing. We must ensure that the NHS, public health and social care outcomes frameworks and the quality and outcomes framework for GPs properly represent mental health priorities. We must invest in cost-effective interventions—which are currently undermined by a postcode lottery—for, for example, perinatal mental health care and parenting programmes, and, crucially, we need early intervention in psychosis and individual placement and support.

My time is almost up but that list is not exhaustive. The quality of this debate shows how many initiatives people understand and want to progress through the development of mental health services. Whether we are talking about adults or children, they need and deserve that support, and I hope that this high-quality debate will help to progress that agenda.