Access to Primary Healthcare

Chris Webb Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Chris Webb (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

At 10 years below the average for England, life expectancy in my constituency is the lowest in the country for men and women. Lord Darzi’s recent report pointed out that people in the most deprived areas of England are twice as likely to wait more than a year for non-urgent treatment. Those problems are compounded by poor-quality housing, low income and insecure employment, which are particularly pronounced in my constituency. That is evident in the casework that my constituency office receives. One man, whose son got in touch with me recently, has been waiting years for a simple hernia operation, and it has impacted on his mental health. It has led to the son fearing that his father could take his own life.

Physical health inequalities contribute to poor mental health and the crisis surrounding it. Chris Whitty’s 2021 report on health in coastal communities detailed the alarming rates of diagnosed severe mental illness in my home town of Blackpool. There were over 500 hospital admissions for intentional self-harm in 2018-19, suicide rates among men were the second highest in the country, and 3,000 people have a severe mental illness.

I recently had the opportunity to meet staff and patients at the Harbour in Blackpool, a modern mental health hospital with fantastic facilities. However, the 154-bed facility is hugely oversubscribed, and patients are routinely sent hundreds of miles away to receive hospital treatment, putting undue pressure and stress on their families. The lack of mental health beds has a knock-on effect on Blackpool Victoria hospital, where the 60-person A&E facility has held up to 188 patients—waiting, at one time, 50 hours to be seen. Those waiting times have been normalised, but they can mean the difference between life and death. The number of hospital admissions for children with mental health problems in my constituency is around 60% higher than the national average.

I urge the Minister and the Secretary of State to consider the model of mental health support championed by charities in my constituency such as Counselling in the Community, an award-winning mental health charity led by its incredible founder and chief executive officer Stuart Hutton-Brown. It uses the skills of trainee counsellors, giving them invaluable career experience while acting as a lifeline for its service users. Empowering such charities to expand their work, rather than relying on the private sector to plug the gap in the NHS, is a great model that will enable us to put money back into the community rather than into the pockets of private providers, and offers better value for money.

Those problems are distilled in Blackpool. I am encouraged by the Government’s recognition of the challenges—I know that the Minister’s Department is prepared to face up to them—but sadly, in Blackpool, they are all too apparent.