Serious Crime Bill [HL]

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I welcome this amendment. I would just like to highlight to your Lordships concerns about the availability of child and adolescent mental health services. In recent information, the mental health charity for young people Young Minds has drawn attention to the fact that,

“34 out of 51 … local authorities in England have reduced their CAMHS budget since 2010. Derby City Council reported a cut in its spending by 41% since 2010. … Overall, local authorities in London have cut their CAMHS budgets by 5% since 2010. 8 out of 12 councils … have reduced their CAMHS budgets”.

So there is a real concern that, although the principle is absolutely right here, the CAMHS services, which are so vital, have unfortunately often been cut. I was very pleased to meet, with members of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children, the honourable Mr Lamb MP, who is the Minister responsible for this area. It was very encouraging that he was aware that a lot of work needed to be done in this particular area. In addition, the Select Committee on Education in the other place is producing a report on child and adolescent mental health services, which I am sure many of us will look forward to—I believe it will be produced in October.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry that other commitments prevented me from speaking at Second Reading on this important Bill, but I have followed its passage closely and I am very grateful to my noble friend the Minister for the briefings that he has given, which I have attended. I want to make one point on the new duty proposed by my noble friend Lady Brinton, and the same point applies—so I shall not repeat the point a second time—to the detailed proposal for mandatory reporting, which may be made by my noble friend Lady Walmsley. I am reassured that my noble friend Lady Brinton was suggesting that, to some extent, her amendment had an exploratory nature.

The point that I wanted to make is an appeal for balance and care on the new regulatory requirements that we put in this Bill. Obviously, I share the horror at recent cases of abuse and concern about inadequate enforcement in the past, which has led to many of the problems that have come to haunt us. However, I fear the imposition of bureaucratic new duties and associated offences on liaison or reporting—that outcome can often be achieved by a good service and by common sense. This Bill brings in a number of new measures, which are good, but we should not be labouring it with extra measures, which could have the perverse effect of preventing a focus on the vital areas needed. We need to ensure that the offences in the Bill are properly enforced in a focused way by those concerned. I would have a concern if we sought to write these amendments into the Bill. We should ask ourselves, as the Minister hinted that he would during his summer of reflection, exactly what is needed and what would be best, given the inevitably limited resources that you have in these very important areas.