Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Lord Newton of Braintree and Lord Ribeiro

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ribeiro]

My Lords, I am very pleased to—I am sorry; I know how difficult it is for my noble friend. Would he like to go ahead?

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

I am sorry but I am really quite slow in standing up, as noble Lords will observe.

I do not want to take a huge amount of time. I am not a member of the Alderdice-Patel-Hollins club and I will therefore not attempt to go down their professional path. I am, however, for the moment at least, a member of another club in that I chair a mental health trust—the Suffolk Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust—so I have an interest to declare. I want to express my strong general support for the basic thrust of these amendments, whatever the wording: to emphasise, in the words of the Government’s White Paper, “No health without mental health”. We need to ensure that mental illness is treated with parity in these matters, so far as we can.

I will make only another couple of observations. First, it is worth remembering that one of the notorious pressures on A&E departments at the moment is people turning up with mental illness problems, in effect, and needing the attention of mental illness specialists. This spills over and crosses the boundaries. I still think it right that there should be separate mental health trusts, but we need to recognise these linkages. Secondly, we need to recognise that this is an area in which integration with social services is particularly important. Integration is key because of the extent to which mental illness services are provided not in hospital but in the community and on a combined operation. As an aside which we will return to, the CQC needs to improve its act in terms of assessing community services for the mentally ill, which in my view it is not at present sufficiently equipped to do. That is a point we shall come back to. My main point is strong support for the principal thrust of these amendments, which I hope my noble friend will feel able to accede to.