Young People: Self-Harm

Debate between Lord Prior of Brampton and Lord Alton of Liverpool

Tuesday 6th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

Last year, the rate of spend by CCGs on mental health went up by 8.6%, compared to 3.7% across the board, so the money is starting to get through. The fact is, though, that there are nooks and crannies in our NHS—which we all love—where we have fundamentally let people down for many years. The issue of self-harm and the suicide risk that derives from self-harm is a very black hole at the heart of the NHS.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, is not the ultimate tragedy for any parent the suicide of their child? Has the Minister seen or talked to ministerial colleagues about the suicide sites on the internet and the chat rooms that are often visited by young people who may be facing depression, mental illness or low levels of self-esteem, and the terrible tragedies that have occurred as a result of a visit to those sites? Is not there more that can be done by the Government to force those providers and servers to stop making such sites available on the internet?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

Unquestionably, there is more that can be done. Some of those sites, certainly some of the pornographic sites, are being addressed in the Digital Economy Bill that is going through the House at the moment. But we are working with the national council and the Samaritans, which in turn are talking to people at Google and YouTube and the digital providers to see what we can do in this area. We have also commissioned a new prevalence study to look at cyberbullying and all those sorts of issues, which will, unfortunately, not produce its results until 2018. So we are very much apprised of this, but, frankly, there is always more that we can do.

Mental Health: Young People

Debate between Lord Prior of Brampton and Lord Alton of Liverpool

Tuesday 11th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, this is a difficult issue. As the noble Lord will know, a key part of the five-year forward view is to take resources out of acute physical care, out of acute hospitals, so that there is more available for mental health care, community care and primary care. It is very difficult to do that. As the noble Lord will know, we have been trying to do this since 2000 but all that has happened is that more and more of the available resource has been sucked into the big acute hospitals. Getting that resource out and into the community and into mental health is extremely difficult. The STP process is going on at the moment. We are committed to seeing more money going into mental health, but I acknowledge the difficulties.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, will the noble Lord confirm that last year we saw the highest level of teenage suicides in 17 years? Welcome though the review of the 2012 strategy is, will the noble Lord say that, as well as looking at issues such as family breakdown, he will look at issues such as cyberbullying? Did he see the case only last week of an 11 year-old boy who committed suicide? His mother said that he had been subjected to cruel and overwhelming social-media and cyber bullying. Will the review examine these links with breakdowns in mental health and teenage suicide, and the very poor state of mental health provision inside the National Health Service for young people?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, on the noble Lord’s last point, the very poor state of mental health provision in the NHS has been with us since 1948, if not earlier. We are trying to address this problem but there is a huge way to go. I acknowledge absolutely the difficulties to which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, also alluded. Professor Appleby, in his report which came out in May of this year, cites cyberbullying as one of a number of factors. They tend to be multifactorial. When someone takes their own life it is normally the end result of often years of misery and a whole range of things. It could have to do with sexuality, bullying, family breakdown or bereavement. This is not an easy situation to solve. Last year, 145 people under the age of 20 took their own lives. This is a tragedy for them and, of course, for their families as well.

Down’s Syndrome: Do Not Resuscitate Orders

Debate between Lord Prior of Brampton and Lord Alton of Liverpool

Tuesday 15th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of East Kent Hospitals University NHS Trust’s decision to list Down’s syndrome as a reason to issue a Do Not Resuscitate order to a patient.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Prior of Brampton) (Con)]

The department expects trusts to have local policies on resuscitation, based on expert professional guidance. Such guidance has been published jointly by the British Medical Association, the Resuscitation Council and the Royal College of Nursing. All resuscitation decisions must be tailored to the individual circumstances of the patient. For patients who lack capacity, the Mental Capacity Act requires a decision in their best interests, taking account of their known wishes, beliefs and values.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, in considering Mencap’s estimate that 1,200 people with learning difficulties die needlessly in NHS care every year, will the Minister look at the inspiring work of the Blue Apple Theatre company, which includes actors with Down’s syndrome performing either “Hamlet” or their play “Living Without Fear”, which was staged in Mr Speaker’s House, and then consider how best we can counter a slide into eugenics, discrimination and non-resuscitation orders, as in the case of Andrew Waters, and look for ways to promote positive and life-affirming attitudes towards people with Down’s syndrome?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, perhaps I could address first the particular issue of Andrew Waters. The doctor who signed the DNR order was a junior doctor who made a mistake. It was a misjudgement, he apologised for that mistake, and he has learnt from it by using his experience to teach other doctors how to deal with similar issues. It is important to make that statement first—the reaction of that junior doctor was the right one, having made that mistake. The noble Lord mentioned the Blue Apple Theatre company. He was kind enough to send me a copy of some of the work that it does, which illustrates that people with Down’s syndrome can have a very full, useful, good and happy life, and their lives should be valued just as highly as the life of any other person.

Mesothelioma (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Prior of Brampton and Lord Alton of Liverpool

Friday 20th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

Perhaps I can take that away and come back to the House. I think it will be difficult to come up with precise figures, to be honest, because of the difficulty in allocating some of the more generic research to particular areas. I think that we can encapsulate some of the comments made by the noble Lords, Lord Winston and Lord Wills, and come back to the House with a more thought through, considered figure.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

I can see that the Minister wants to move on from the issue of funding, but before he does I should point out that the House has been given figures. It is important to record that in our debate, because they are figures that his predecessor, the noble Earl, Lord Howe, gave the House in reply to a Parliamentary Question tabled by my noble friend Lord Wigley, and referred to by my noble friend Lady Finlay earlier. The figures in the reply to Parliamentary Question HL5852 show that funding from the NIHR on,

“research centres and units, and research training awards on mesothelioma research”,

as the Minister said, in 2006-7 was £0.0 million; in 2007-8 was £0.0 million; in 2008-9 was £0.0 million; in 2009-10 was £0.0 million; in 2010-11 was £0.0 million; in 2011-12 was £0.0 million; in 2012-13 was £0.2 million; and, in 2014, was £0.4 million. Those are the Government’s own figures, which have already been given to Parliament.

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

I think that we are into some definitional issues here, to be honest, from what the noble Lord, Lord Winston, said, and from the figures that I gave earlier, which I am not making up—they are figures that have been given to me. We should come back with some greater clarification and perhaps some closer definition of what the funding figures are.

My impression, although it may be wrong, is that the essential problem is not a lack of funding but a lack of sufficient research applications. Of course, I accept that there is a connection between the two, which I shall perhaps come back to in a minute. The MRC received no mesothelioma applications in 2014-15, and only one in the current year. I want to clarify and stress that the work being funded is of high quality, consequent to high-quality applications. In response to questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, and others, the Government have taken measures to stimulate an increase in the level of research activity. Patients, carers, clinicians, academics and funders have worked in partnership with the James Lind Alliance to identify what the priorities in research should be.

I imagine that some noble Lords will have read the report by the James Lind Alliance, but for those who have not I can say that, following a survey and a workshop, the top 10 mesothelioma research priorities were announced in December 2014, and the NIHR published a final report from the priority-setting partnership in July. In advance of the identification of research questions by this partnership, the NIHR highlighted to the research community that it wanted to encourage research applications in mesothelioma. The NIHR subsequently invited researchers to apply for research funding, in particular to address the research questions identified by the partnership. Eight NIHR programmes participated in this themed call. Fifteen individual applications have been received, of which two have been approved for funding to date, two are under review, and 11 have been rejected. Some noble Lords may think that that is a very high level of rejection, but it is broadly consistent with the overall funding rate for applications to NIHR programmes, which is roughly about one in five.

In addition, the NIHR Research Design Service continues to be able to help prospective applicants to develop competitive research proposals. This service is well-established and has 10 regional bases across England. It supports researchers to develop and design high-quality proposals for submission to NIHR itself and to other national, peer-reviewed funding competitions for applied health or social care research.

The Government are not predisposed to support the Bill, but there is something that we ought to consider—perhaps outside the Chamber. We believe that the existing process for accessing research grants works well; we do not believe that money is the real shortage. It is interesting to note that the Government’s spend on research for medicine is a little over £1 billion—a very significant sum—but the Government are not keen on hypothecated grants for research. However, I have been thinking about this very carefully over the last couple of days, and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, touched on it slightly obliquely at the beginning, but it is an important point.

When the 2014 Bill went through Parliament, it was felt by the Department for Work and Pensions that the highest levy that could be taken from the insurers without forcing them to pass it on through higher premiums into industry was 3%. I understand that there is a shortfall between that 3% and the actual level of claims being made. I wonder whether the 1% that is being asked for in this Bill could be funded through the shortfall within the existing levy. That might be an avenue worth exploring. I say that because at the moment the fact that we are relying on two insurance companies is not equitable. Why should Zurich and Norwich Union cough up £1 million when other employers’ liability insurers are not contributing? This needs further discussion, but I wonder whether there is a way through this and whether we could not use the shortfall in the existing levy.