Mental Health (Discrimination) (No. 2) Bill

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Friday 18th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, I rise to give my enthusiastic support to this measure. Given the conditions outside and what I am sure is the desire of noble Lords to get home as soon as possible, I can probably signify my support fairly formally—or, at any rate, briefly.

As someone who has had a bit to do with anti-discrimination and equality legislation in my time, I am a bit embarrassed that it should be necessary to bring a Private Member’s Bill to remedy the injustices this Bill seeks to correct. I suppose any piece of generic, comparatively unfocused legislation like the Disability Discrimination Act, and now the Equality Act, is bound to miss a few specific provisions—pockets of discrimination, which, to our shame, remain hidden away in the interstices of the statute book. We should be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for winkling them out and bringing them to us today so that we can root out once and for all these anomalies, which, inappropriately in the 21st century, continue to disfigure our legislation and have unaccountably escaped the consolidator’s pruning knife.

Perhaps we should not be altogether surprised that these anomalies should have survived, because of course they reflect the particular stigma that mental illness has traditionally attracted, and still attracts—greater even that that attaching to physical disability. For that very reason, we should warmly welcome this Bill as sending a strong message that the outdated attitudes reflected in the discriminatory provisions that the Bill sweeps away are no longer regarded as appropriate in a civilised society.

Like other noble Lords, I do not propose to say anything about the specific provisions of the Bill, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, pointed out, are fully covered in the briefing which has been provided. Rather, I will simply give the Bill a warm welcome, thank and commend the noble Lord for bringing it before us today and express the hope that your Lordships will give it an enthusiastic Second Reading and speed it on its way.

Of course, that will not be the end of the story. As the noble Lord said, the Bill makes just an inroad in the problem of discrimination which still attends those who suffer from mental illness. Mind, Rethink Mental Illness and the Royal College of Psychiatrists point out that there is still a good deal to do before parity of esteem between physical and mental health is achieved. That means valuing those who suffer from mental illness equally with those who suffer from physical illnesses.

They say that several things need to be done to improve outcomes for those who suffer from mental illness. The notion of parity needs to be embedded in the NHS constitution. Mental health services should be funded to a level which accords with the scale of mental illness. Currently, mental illness accounts for 23% of all illness, but receives only 13% of the NHS budget. Waiting times for mental health treatments need to be comparable with those for physical illnesses. They recommend annual health checks for people with mental health problems, and enhanced training on co-morbidity to avoid people with severe and enduring mental health problems dying 20 years younger than the general population.

The Bill can be a springboard to end wider discrimination, which is still endemic in the delivery of mental health services, and to move towards the parity of esteem which the advocates for those who suffer from mental illness desire. Given that, this time around, the Bill has already passed all its stages in the Commons before reaching us, I trust that, with a fair wind and a helping hand from the Government, it will now reach the statute book with the minimum of delay.