Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services

Alison Seabeck Excerpts

Monday 2nd February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Norman Lamb]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work that he does on mental health. He is another champion of mental health in this House. I also pay tribute to the people in the service in Dudley that he mentioned. I have visited a fantastic children and young people’s mental health service in Accrington in Lancashire—one of the six pilots on using psychological therapies for people with severe and enduring mental ill-health. He makes a very good point. We need to celebrate great care where we find it, and also ensure that commissioners, in local authorities and in clinical commissioning groups, take this seriously. The trouble is that when there are no standards at all in mental health, it is very easy for people quietly to cut back, thinking that they can get away with it. That is why I want to ensure that people suffering mental ill-health have exactly the same right to access treatment as anyone else.

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

It was interesting to hear the Minister say that he has learned lessons from the incident in Torbay, because there was exactly the same incident over a year ago in my constituency. A young person who had committed a violent offence found themselves in a police cell for 36 hours. I spent the best part of the day working with officers involved with mental health from the local authority and the health service, desperately trying to find an appropriate place for that person’s particular behavioural issue. They had not got a list. We looked at a place in Somerset that had closed, probably thanks to the 6% cuts. Will the Minister help Members of the House by placing in the Library a list of where the beds are and what the specialisms are? It would be enormously helpful to us, and certainly to those working in that field.

[Norman Lamb]

I would be happy to provide as much information as possible—I have no need to keep anything secret and I would like to assist as much as I can. Again, I caution that children and young people turning up in police cells has been happening, quietly and unnoticed, for a very long time, but the truth is that the numbers are coming down. That is good, but I want it to stop altogether.