Mental Health

Andrew Griffiths Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)]

I too offer my thanks and praise to my hon. Friends the Members for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) and for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) for securing the debate and for putting mental health at the centre of Parliament and the centre of our thoughts today. I also want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis). Over recent months, he has played Starsky to my Hutch in relation to mental health debates. He also managed to make my speech today in a much more succinct and erudite manner than I could ever hope to do.

I rise today to make a plea to the Minister. He graciously attended an Adjournment debate that I secured on the closure of the Margaret Stanhope centre, a mental health facility in my constituency. It was as a result of his intervention that the consultation was extended, and I was grateful for that. The end result, however, was that the local PCT—South Staffordshire PCT—took the decision to close the centre. As a newly elected Member of Parliament, I assumed that such decisions would be taken based on facts and evidence, and that there would be hard facts to enable the PCT’s claims to stack up. I assumed that its claims about the provision that was going to replace the Margaret Stanhope centre would be demonstrable. As my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East said earlier, however, the reality was a mind-blowing situation, in which the inability of the PCT to make any of its claims stack up throughout the process became apparent. I was disappointed, but not surprised, that the PCT dismissed the petition organised by my local newspaper, the Burton Mail, to save this much-loved facility, which some 8,200 people signed. The PCT decided to dismiss it because, it said, the petition did not deal absolutely to the letter with all the options that were in the consultation.

Throughout the consultation, the PCT made a number of claims. To start with, it said that it had carried out a pilot scheme and could demonstrate that it could reduce the need for in-patient care by a third. Understandably, we asked for the evidence to back that up. After five weeks of asking, it eventually provided me with some occupancy rates. We then asked for further occupancy rates, because the initial ones did not stack up. We asked for daily occupancy rates. It took a further two months for the PCT to give us that information. When we analysed it, it showed that far from reducing the need for in-patient beds by a third, only stays of more than 90 days—a minute part of in-patient care—had been reduced by a third. The vast majority of the figures had stayed the same and one-day admissions had actually gone up.

We looked further into what the PCT was saying. It had claimed that an independent report by Staffordshire university had said that closing the facility would not have an impact. When we looked at the report, we found that the professor from Staffordshire university who had conducted it was also employed by the PCT. She was on the payroll of the PCT, and yet it was praying in aid her report.

We cited a benchmarking report by the Audit Commission, which demonstrated that the PCT had among the lowest provision of mental health beds in the country. It stated that of 46 mental health trusts, Staffordshire had the lowest provision. Surprise, surprise, the following quarter’s evidence showed that my PCT had the highest provision. It had shot up from the lowest to the highest. When we explored that a little more, we found that the PCT had included beds such as those for eating disorders and drug and alcohol problems. It had lumped them all together to fix the figures.

The most worrying thing for me was that when I attended the final hearing where the decision was made, lay members on the panel were asking basic questions such as how many beds were available and what the occupancy rates were, even after a four-month consultation. They clearly did not have any of the information that was necessary to make such an important decision.

I urge the Minister to think long and hard about how we can bring rigour into such decisions. Mental health issues can affect any family, rich or poor, and are no respecter of intelligence, upbringing or anything like that. It is essential that there is a rigorous, accountable and transparent process before PCTs are able to decide to do away with these vital beds. I urge the Minister to consider how the Government can provide those reassurances.