Mental Health Bill [Lords]

Calum Miller Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 19th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for sharing such personal lived experience of the issues we are debating this afternoon. I encourage her to take every opportunity to share those experiences directly with Ministers or through the passage of this Bill, which others in a similar situation will also have had, so that we can provide the best possible support for people experiencing a mental health crisis and for their loved ones, who also experience an enormous amount of pain and anxiety in supporting someone going through acute mental illness.

We are also updating the outdated nearest relative provisions to allow patients to choose someone to be their nominated person, which gives that individual important powers to represent the patient’s interests when they cannot represent themselves. One patient explained:

“My mother used to perform this role, but she now has Alzheimer’s and she lacks capacity. Under the current system, I cannot specify who I wish to serve as my nearest relative. The responsibility would automatically go to my oldest sister—a sister I do not get on with”.

Our reforms will ensure that this statutory role is not chosen for the patient, but is rather the choice of the patient.

Advocacy services are often a lifeline for those who find themselves in the vulnerable position of being detained, giving a voice to those who may otherwise feel voiceless. Patients have reported that an advocate can ensure that

“their voice and opinion is valued and listened to. They came to my meetings, valued my opinion and put my views across to other people. People listened to my advocate.”

We are also extending advocacy services to patients who come to hospital voluntarily and making changes to improve advocacy uptake among those who are detained, as well as working to change the culture of our health and care services so that everyone is listened to and so that patients do not have to rely on an advocacy service to get their voice heard.

[Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)]

I am grateful to the youthful Secretary of State for giving way. In the past few months, I have had a number of constituents describe the difficulties they have had in transitioning from care provided by child and adolescent mental health services to adult mental health services—a critical transition. They specifically faced difficulties in accessing the same medication when they turned 18 that they had previously been reliant on as young people. Can the Secretary of State describe to me how either the Bill or the change in culture for which he is advocating will improve the situation for people like my constituents?

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful for that intervention. The hon. Gentleman raises what is, frankly, the depressingly familiar issue of the transition from youth and adolescent services to adult services, which applies across such a wide range of public services. It is so frustrating that we are still, in this decade of the 21st century, describing a problem that was prevalent in the ’90s and noughties.

None the less, we are working to improve not just the law, but the performance in this space. Many of the changes we will be looking to make under the auspices of our 10-year plan are about better joining up of data, information and patient records, better care planning for patients and designing services around patients so that everyone—whatever their age or stage of treatment—receives joined-up services, with clinicians having a full picture of that patient’s experience. Hopefully, that will also help to deal with some of the cliff edges and bumps in the road that people can often experience when transitioning from one part of the NHS to another, whether that is from youth and adolescent services to adult services or the interface between primary and secondary care.