Children and Mental Health Services

Debate between Andrew Griffiths and Lord Beamish

Tuesday 16th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) for securing this debate. It is important because the simple way to change attitudes around mental health in this country is to talk about it. The more we do it in Parliament, the better. I pay tribute to all those, including charities such as Rethink Mental Illness, that have made a real step change in the way that we consider mental health in this country. I also give credit to the Minister. She obviously does not know what will happen next week with the change in Prime Minster, but she has been a great champion for mental health in not only doing the work that she does, but caring about it. Sometimes we get a Minster who simply goes through the motions, but this Minister cares deeply about the subject and has made a real difference.

The point about finance is important in mental health. That point has been made over the years not only in respect of adult services, but in respect of children’s services, and it has been made again today. Having the proper workforce is also important. I do not want to relegate those two issues because they are very important in this debate, but the other thing that often does not get spoken about is having a proper pathway into a service, which is a mess at the moment, partly as a result of reorganisations in the health service. We have also had cuts to local authorities and they can no longer afford to fund voluntary sector organisations. Sure Start centres have been cut, and the cuts are having an impact on people’s access to services.

I pay tribute to CAMHS. They get a bad name, but they are trying their best in the impossible job that we give them. We have to try and turn down the pipeline of people going into CAMHS services. The only way we can do that is if we have a proper triage system before going into CAMHS, so that people know whether they can get help elsewhere. We often over-medicalise mental health conditions. The Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys mental health trust in my area has a good pilot that pays for a psychiatrist to sit in a GP’s surgery so that a mental health professional can triage cases as they come in. I do not want to criticise GPs, but they are not mental health professionals. They should have a mental health professional who can triage the cases that need to go through to CAMHS or other adult mental health services and then they can try to help the others.

We need a local network of support organisations, whether it is the voluntary sector, as the hon. Member for Burton rightly pointed out, or others that do fantastic work. He put his finger on the issue of how we tender for mental health services. I am sorry, but the ones that I speak to in County Durham have contracts that are too big and they do not have the capacity to take them on, but they do valuable work in the community. In some cases, it is a way of taking pressure off the pipeline going into CAMHS and adult mental services. Parents want to know where to go, so we need signposts and pathways so that people do not wait 12 months or longer to get into CAMHS, thinking that will somehow answer their questions.

[Andrew Griffiths]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way and for his great speech. Does he agree that one of the reasons why they tender in that way is because they want to have a uniform approach across the whole country? In reality, if someone wants access to a service, people understand the local charity and are much more aware of it, and more likely to go to it for that very reason.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I do agree. In my experience the best local examples of mental health support are what is being done by local charities, most of which, frankly, run on a shoestring. They do not ask for huge amounts of money. I think it would be cost-effective for the taxpayer if we directed services into that, but we need that joined-up system. If we do not have it, we can pour as much money as we like into the system and it will not work.

I want to mention one last thing—students’ mental health, which is being highlighted in universities. Will the Minister contact Northumbria University, which is doing innovative work on using new technology to track students and highlight those who are vulnerable? I saw it a few weeks ago on a visit to the university. It is a new model, which could have implications nationally, and I think it is worth looking at. I will finish by just saying, let us keep on talking about this subject.

Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Debate between Andrew Griffiths and Lord Beamish

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Yes, I recognise that—

[The Lord Commissioner of Her Majesty’s Treasury (Andrew Griffiths)]

But you were wrong.

[Mr Jones]

From a sedentary position on the Treasury Bench, the hon. Gentleman says that I was wrong, but I was not. In Durham and other places, the flat budget for police funding from central Government will have to be made up by local taxpayers. Taking into account the pay increase and inflation, that will amount to a real-terms cut.

First World War Commemoration

Debate between Andrew Griffiths and Lord Beamish

Thursday 7th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the good work that the CWGC does. He will know that many graves of Victoria Cross holders across the country are neglected and that only those soldiers who died in battle have their graves covered by the CWGC. May I commend to him the work of the Victoria Cross Trust, a charity, of which I am a patron, that does such good work in restoring the graves of VC heroes across the country?

[Mr Jones]

I commend that body. The CWGC’s remit is defined by its charter, but the important point is that the CWGC does look after all those graves in the UK that come under its charter. We are talking about either the traditional stones that people will recognise or private memorials. I pay tribute to councillors in the north-east of England, all of whose areas have now erected these green signs. I ask hon. Members of any party who wish to have them erected in their local cemeteries to contact me or the hon. Member for Broadland, as we will be only too willing to help. We have had a bit of a glitch with the Church of England—I am sorry that the Second Church Estates Commissioner, the hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) is not here for this—which seemed to offer a protracted and bureaucratic reason for why we could not put these signs up. I am glad to say that some progress has been made, including in Durham, where the Archbishop of Canterbury, the former Bishop of Durham, seemed to cut through the red tape of the Church of England. It would be nice to see those tasteful signs on all churchyards, just to raise awareness, so that local people know that the graves are there.

Let me now deal with the issues raised by the Minister. I congratulate him on the work he has done on them, because I think he has got this right. There was a real danger that this could go wrong. As he said, it is right that there will be national and international commemorations, but the real focus has to come from below—I totally agree with him on that; local communities have to get involved. I pay tribute to the Heritage Lottery Fund, which is providing grants for local communities, a few of them in my constituency, including Park View school, which has just received a grant for doing a world war one project. I know that there are many others. Pelton Fell memorial park is applying for a grant and a number of other villages want to hold events. Sacriston, for example, wants to hold a village at war event.

I am passionate about ensuring that those who lost their lives are remembered, but another important aspect is what happened in local communities. In the north-east and County Durham, for example, the role of coal mining in the first world war was important, as were the roles of women in munitions factories and the munitions industry in Tyneside.

I am pleased that my hon. Friends the Members for Caerphilly (Wayne David) and for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) mentioned conscientious objectors, because the war was divisive. In the early parts of the conflict, members of the Independent Labour party were very much against the involvement of Britain in the war. There were some notable exceptions and some people broke away, including Clem Attlee, who fought bravely at Gallipoli. One of my predecessors, Jack Lawson, the Member for Chester-le-Street—who, by coincidence, was a member of the Imperial War Graves Commission in the 1920s—fought on the western front, even though he was an ILP member.

There are opportunities for communities not only to remember the first world war but to do some good things about their own history and to ensure that people remember the contribution that everyone made to the war effort. When I was the veterans Minister, I had the privilege of meeting Harry Patch, Bill Stone and Henry Allingham. Sadly, I also attended their funerals. As the Minister said, they were the last living link to the first world war, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) said, has now passed into history. This is a great opportunity to ensure that future generations not only do not forget but know of the important role that their local communities played in that important part of our great nation’s history.