Health and Social Care Bill

Debate between Lord Williamson of Horton and Lord Newton of Braintree

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Lord Williamson of Horton]

My Lords, briefly but warmly, I support Amendment 11, which seems to me to be desirably explicit and logical in the structure of the opening clauses of the Bill. It is desirably explicit because, while I am sure that the Minister actually wants continuous improvement in the quality of service in connection with the prevention, diagnosis or treatment of physical and mental health, those words do not appear in Clause 2. There remains in the wider public some feeling that mental health has a lower priority than physical health. I believe that there has been a huge improvement in the priority given to mental health—I have a lot of experience of that because of my family circumstances—but the feeling I have referred to exists. Therefore, to be explicit on mental health in this clause is good.

The amendment is logical in the Bill because under subsection (1) of the new clause in Clause 1:

“The Secretary of State must continue”,

to promote,

“a comprehensive health service designed to secure improvement … in the physical and mental health of the people of England”,

yet we do not have that phrase in Clause 2, where we come on to,

“improvement in the quality of services … in connection with … the prevention, diagnosis or treatment of illness”.

That directly contributes to what is expressed in Clause 1, so we need to carry over that phrase and avoid its omission in Clause 2. That is why I support this amendment.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord Williamson of Horton and Lord Newton of Braintree

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Williamson of Horton]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, referred to the human factor, and I think that I am actually the human factor, so on this occasion I wish to intervene. I carry a heavy load of family history in relation to Cornwall. My grandfather was the vicar of Padstow on the north coast, the vicar of Falmouth on the south coast, the archdeacon of Bodmin in the middle, and the canon of Truro, which is the county town. As I say, I carry rather a lot of weight that favours the amendment, and I support it. Incidentally, I am now 76 years old. The first memory I have of my entire life is that of my first visit to Cornwall, which was made in 1939.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

Briefly, I ask my noble friend why, if this river and estuary are to be written into the law in this way, others should not be? We have already had arguments about the Mersey. I live in Essex and the Thames is at least as substantial a division between Essex and Kent, I suspect, as the Tamar is between Devon and Cornwall. One can think of a number of other rivers including the Severn, which is a big division between the south-west and Wales, so why are we going to pick out only one? The problem with most of these rivers—I am afraid I do not know the West Country well enough to know whether it is thus with the Tamar—is that a dividing factor at the mouth, where that is so big, becomes a uniting factor further inland, where towns straddle the same river: the Thames, the Severn or whatever it might be. It is not rational to build this kind of consideration into this kind of legislation.