Draft Mental Health Bill

Lord Mawson Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I could not agree more with the noble Baroness. One thing we must be well aware of is that, although there are pressures and we are asked for more funding, the Government alone cannot do all this. Sometimes officials, be they from local or national government or from another state organisation, are mistrusted by vulnerable people. Local civil society groups, voluntary organisations and, often, those who have suffered the same problems themselves and then been inspired to set up their own organisation to support others—who can empathise with the situation many of these poor women are in—are sometimes the best first point of contact. As the Government spend more on this, we must make sure that we are not squeezing out the voluntary sector or local civil society, but working in partnership with them.

[Lord Mawson (CB)]

My Lords, my colleagues and I have been involved in this space for many years. I was in conversation with my colleagues just last week. I agree with the noble Baroness, but one of the challenges we face is the financing when organisations try to create this more integrated environment. The money and the streams coming out of the Treasury are endlessly pulling apart the very services that need to be connected. I encourage the Minister and his colleagues to look at some of that. In Bromley-by-Bow we are still dealing with 62 different funding sources from government, with all the attendant bureaucracy that is trying to deal with this problem.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The noble Lord makes a very important point from his own experience. I thank him for all his engagement and for educating me on what happens in the community. We must be careful because often, these issues are not simple or binary but are multi-faceted, and we then have different initiatives from the Government, which overlap. There is probably an incredibly complex Venn diagram of who is responsible, where the funding pots are and at what level you get the funding—is it local government, national government or philanthropy networks, for example? I would love to make it easy—but will I be able to?

Also, whenever you have change there are often winners and losers. Often, those who lose out because of change are very concentrated and make their voices heard, while the winners are dispersed and we do not hear them saying, “This is a great change.” Therefore, we must be very careful with any change in funding. However, the noble Lord makes an incredibly important point. We must ensure that we are not squeezing out civil society and pulling people in many directions, and that it is much easier to access finance. The noble Lord, Lord Glasman, made the point that as a Labour Peer, he is incredibly proud of 1945 and the welfare state, but that he worries that in doing such things, sometimes the state squeezes out local community groups and breaks the bonds in local communities. We must ensure that we get the right balance.