Coronavirus Act 2020 (Expiry of Mental Health Provisions) (England and Wales) Regulations 2020

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2020 Grand Committee

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD) [V]]

My Lords, removal of the mental health provisions from the Coronavirus Act, which represented a significant reduction in protection and safeguards for people subject to the Mental Health Act is, as the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said, very welcome. Serious concerns have been raised about whether it would ever be human rights-compliant to enact the provisions. Even before the Covid-19 crisis hit, mental health services were severely stretched, with waiting times and barriers to access which would be considered unacceptable in any other area of medicine.

Turning to the scale of need, psychiatrists have reported an increase in patients needing urgent and emergency care during the crisis, and the latest NHS Digital figures show the highest recorded figures for mental health contact. According to the Centre for Mental Health, there are approximately 10 million extra people with mental health needs due to the pandemic. A survey conducted in late spring by the charity Rethink showed that almost 80% of people with pre-existing mental illnesses reported that their mental health had got worse or much worse as a result of the pandemic, and the ONS found that almost one in five adults in Britain experienced depressive symptoms in June 2020—roughly twice the number before the pandemic. Against this backdrop, it is crucial to the nation's Covid-19 recovery that existing mental health funding commitments in the NHS long-term plan are delivered in full and that services are resourced to support those who had new or worsening mental health difficulties because of the crisis. It is not either/or, it is both/and.

It is of course welcome that eventually an extra £500 million was promised in the mental health winter plan, published on Monday, to help with discharge to community care, workforce issues and addressing waiting times. This is a good start, but unlikely to be sufficient and, crucially, does not come onstream until the next operational year, leaving a gaping hole in the tough winter period ahead. What commitments can the Minister give that some of this new money will be spent on preventive work and early intervention to stop mental health issues escalating to crisis point and putting additional pressures on expensive police, A&E and in-patient services?

In the long term, it is not just a case of mental health services surviving the pandemic; they will need drastically to expand and improve to deal with the long-term impact of social isolation, mass unemployment and pandemic-induced anxiety.

The powers we are debating weakened an Act that was already in need of major reform. The independent review of the Mental Health Act put forward proposals to improve the system and increase patient rights. Can the Minister update the Committee on when the Government will provide a full response to the independent review and publish their proposals to take forward reform of the Mental Health Act, with a clear implementation timescale? The two-year anniversary of the publication of the Mental Health Act review will be 6 December 2020. I strongly hope that the Government’s response will not be delayed beyond that point.