Mental Health (Discrimination) Bill [HL]

Lord Patel of Blackburn Excerpts

Friday 25th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patel of Blackburn]

My Lords, I have many reasons for wishing to speak in support of this vital Bill, and I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for introducing it. I know very well the noble Lord's commitment to this area, and I must acknowledge my esteem for his honesty, openness and integrity in trying to ensure that this issue is not lost or ignored any further.

I am no stranger to the impact of discrimination for people suffering mental illness. As a former chairman of the Mental Health Act Commission, I was made aware on a daily basis of the pain and injustice that people experienced by virtue of having a problem that affects more than one in four of us at some time. It is also my firm belief that this issue can be truly understood only from the perspective of the person affected. The voices of service users and those experiencing mental health problems are essential to our understanding of the issues. It was for this reason that I sought to have a mental health service user join the board of the Mental Health Act Commission. I am thankful that that was not illegal or prohibited.

We were fortunate to gain the expertise and insight of a remarkable woman, Kay Sheldon. Kay was in many respects an unusual choice. She was not the usual type of person to apply to be on a board, and she clearly made her views known at the interview. As someone who had experienced detention several times under the Mental Health Act, she said she would consistently stand up for the rights of service users and be a voice for those who have direct experience of mental health problems. We could not have had a more excellent advocate of service-user rights, and that, in essence, was our core function: to ensure the protection of those very rights. Kay is now a member of the Care Quality Commission, and I know that she remains firmly and completely committed to the rights of people using health services and continues to ensure that the voices of service users are at the forefront of decisions about healthcare.

It is from my personal knowledge of Kay and the many others with mental health problems who have made an immense contribution over the years, particularly to public services, that I wish to speak in very firm support of this Bill. I hope that the Minister will agree with me that it is crucial to have people like Kay who bring their personal experience to the strategy and decision-making of public boards.

I also strongly support this Bill because of the message it sends about ending discrimination. I was very fortunate this week to meet a remarkable young man, Danniel Bennett. Danniel was in a very serious accident earlier this year which almost cost him his life. He was bleeding badly from his head after suffering an injury while playing football, and his father, who was there, had to give him CPR before the ambulance arrived. It was a very serious injury and the young boy's life was in the balance. He was only 13 years old. Danniel is from the Romany Gypsy community and a health worker who happened to be at the scene—a professional whose job is to save lives—refused to help the father give CPR. Her attitude was, “He’s a Gypsy, let him die”. He did not die, thanks to his father's knowledge of CPR, but he needed to go to hospital and needed treatment for his serious head injury. That should have been simple and unquestioned, but he was not admitted to hospital and did not receive a CAT scan. While anxiously waiting in the A&E department, his father was told that his son would not be admitted because, and I quote, “Your kind always turn up in droves”, and that he “should be grateful you are getting any treatment at all anyway”. It was the family GP who, when he saw Danniel the following day, immediately called 999 and had Danniel admitted for a CAT scan which revealed that he had two haematomas on his brain. Danniel survived, but he is still experiencing problems and he can remember hearing that his life was not worth saving because of who he is, a Romany Gypsy. It is a shocking story and hard to believe, yet I know that this kind of discrimination goes on even in the heart of our most trusted public services. We cannot separate our values from the framework of our laws. Our laws set the standards of behaviour we expect, and must themselves never be the cause of unjustified and unreasonable discrimination.

I want to end by reading a short extract from one of the many poems that this 13 year-old boy has written. It sums up what this Bill is all about.

“I challenge you Mr Government

To walk a mile in my shoes

I will start

By taking away your freedom

And then your choices too

And when your soul is destroyed

And you can feel no more pain

I will set you free and give you back your name

So that you can sit back

And feel what it's like to be me

And hopefully your heart and head

Will be filled with shame”.

I hope that today there is no need for shame and that the House will put an end to at least one injustice of discrimination: that against people who experience mental health problems. People like Kay and Danniel deserve our full support. I wish we had a thousand more like them on our school boards, in Parliament, running companies and serving on our juries. I urge noble Lords to support this Bill and put an end to this discrimination.