Abuse and Deaths in Secure Mental Health Units

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Maria Caulfield]

May I put on record my thanks to the hon. Gentleman for all he has done in raising these issues and supporting families? He is right. One area of concern with mental health care—we have also seen inquiries into maternity services—is that often patients and families have flagged issues and raised concerns to regulators and the individual trust, but they go unheard.

That is why I want to look at things such as making the whistleblowing process easier. The CQC recognises that and is changing its inspection process to ensure that families, staff, friends and patients have input into inspections. That is also why we introduced the patient safety commissioner, who took up her role in September, so that patients, staff and families have another avenue for raising concerns. If they feel that they are not being listened to at a local level, they have someone to go to who will raise concerns on their behalf.

It is absolutely devastating that the families recognised the problems and their voices were not heard. I would be very happy to meet him and the families to discuss that further.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

I join in the tributes to my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald). As he and others have said, the report into the tragedy that saw three young women die in the north-east points to multiple failures by the Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust, which still struggles to deliver the services that our community needs.

The Minister will agree that the trust must learn from the tragedy, but it needs much more support to drive up standards and avoid more deaths. The trust, like many others, struggles to recruit the professional staff that it needs, because they are simply not available. I also question whether it has the capacity to drive the rapid improvement that we need. What plans does she have to intervene at the trust? What will she do to ensure that it and others can recruit the people they desperately need?

[Maria Caulfield]

As I said in my opening remarks, the trust is taking a number of steps urgently to improve its services, from investing £5 million on reducing ligature risks right through to looking at how it develops and implements care plans. However, the response must be wider than the individual trust. We must ensure that when inspections take place, they pick up the red flags that will alert someone to the problems happening in a unit. The CQC is also changing its inspection processes. It is vital that patients, staff and families can raise concerns if they have them and that they are properly inspected. We need to address this issue at a national level. The trust is not an isolated example—there have been a number of incidences—and both I and the Secretary of State want to be satisfied about exactly where the problems are occurring and that we have a national response, not just individual trusts having to deal with problems themselves.