UK Steel Manufacturing

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

Well, the previous Government did not. We have a £2.5 billion fund and, as I said, we are looking at DRI to make virgin iron. To be clear, we are having to deal with a mess that we inherited. Virgin steel is important, and that is what we are looking at. I am not going to say to the hon. Gentleman right now that this is what we are spending our £2.5 billion investment on, because this is being worked on at pace. We will come back to the House as soon as we have something to announce.

[Derek Twigg (Widnes and Halewood) (Lab)]

The defence industry manufacturing base is, of course, vital to this country, not least in the engineering jobs it provides. We know that steel is crucial to building armoured vehicles and ships, for instance. It is very important that we have a regular and guaranteed supply of steel, and we want to see more UK steel used in defence manufacturing.

[Sarah Jones]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend, who has much expertise in this area. The Department is working closely with the Ministry of Defence and the Secretary of State for Defence to make sure we are maintaining our defence. We are building as much as we can in the UK, with as many contracts in the UK as we can. We are using the power of Government to deliver that.

Mental Health and Wellbeing Plan

Derek Twigg Excerpts

Wednesday 15th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Derek Twigg (in the Chair)]

I will call Kevan Jones to move the motion, and I will then call the Minister to respond. As is the convention for a 30-minute debate, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the mental health and wellbeing plan.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg.

It is now 11 years since there was a major debate in Parliament on mental illness, when I and many other hon. Members spoke about their own experiences. That debate changed attitudes in this place towards mental illness and wellbeing, and both the press and members of the public have made great strides in being able to speak about mental health. We also now have members of the royal family speaking about their own mental illness, and it is heartening to see the Prince of Wales taking mental health and wellbeing as one of their charity initiatives. Unfortunately, however, there is still a lot of progress to be made in delivering timely treatment, particularly prevention and early intervention.

In England, the numbers speak for themselves. Around 1.7 million people are in contact with mental health services, and according to NHS England’s monthly statistic dashboard, 26,000 of them are occupying hospital beds or have a hospital bed open to them. We have also seen severe pressures on ambulance services and the police due to people in mental health crisis asking for help. However, according to the National Audit Office, there could be around 8 million people with mental health needs that are not currently being met by mental health services.

I am sure the Minister will tell us shortly that the Government are delivering record levels of investment in mental health services, but according to research by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, almost a quarter of people are waiting more than 12 weeks for any form of treatment. Some 43% of mental health patients say that longer waiting times make their conditions worse, and 78% resort to attending A&E because they cannot access services. I am sorry, but that is unacceptable. It shows that despite the amount of money going into mental health—I would argue that there needs to be more—much more needs to be done on prevention. We need a joined-up approach across Government to reduce the demand on services and to get people more timely treatment and intervention.

That is why I welcomed the Government’s announcement of the development of a cross-departmental 10-year mental health and wellbeing plan last year, and it was also broadly welcomed by everyone in the mental health sphere, including many charities. It was launched with a great fanfare of publicity as a major initiative by the Government, who said at the time of the launch that

“now is the right time to think about bold, long-term actions to build the mentally healthy society that we want to see in 10 years’ time.”

The then Health Secretary, the right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), said that

“our new 10-year plan will set an ambitious agenda for where we want the mental health of our nation to be in a decade’s time.”

Over 5,200 individuals, organisations and stakeholders responded to the discussion paper. Charities such as Mind said that a truly cross-Government plan will play a key role in making sure that support for our mental health starts to rebuild, post pandemic, to the same level as our physical health, so it was a bit of a shock when the 10-year plan was quietly scrapped in January this year. Instead, the Government say that mental health will be addressed in their major conditions strategy. As I have already stated, it is clear from the number of people requiring interventions that mental health should be included in any such strategy.