Mental Health Treatment and Support

Emma Hardy Excerpts

Wednesday 7th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Neil O’Brien)]

I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “House” to the end of the Question and add:

“notes the increased burden on mental health following the pandemic, including on young people and those with severe mental illness; recognises the historic levels of investment being delivered by this Government into services, with an increase of £2.3 billion per year in front-line mental health funding over the past four years; notes that current NHS targets around access to talking therapies and intervention in psychosis are being met due to the efforts of NHS staff; and acknowledges the investment in mental health teams in schools, as well as the ongoing investment into open access mental health helplines in the 111 service and into the estate, including three new mental health hospitals to be opened in the next two years accompanied by a further £150 million in investment in new mental health ambulances and the development of better alternatives to accident and emergency services, including crisis houses, safe havens and step-down services.”

Improving mental health is a top priority for this Government. We can all agree that in the past it was not given the priority it deserves, and was seen as something to be ashamed of and not spoken about. Thankfully, we are changing that. We are working to achieve parity of esteem between physical health and mental health, with record amounts of investment going into NHS mental health services in England, and the stigma surrounding mental health is being reduced.

“The Five Year Forward View for Mental Health”, which was published in 2016, was a major step forward and secured an additional £1 billion in funding for mental health, so that an additional 1 million people could access high-quality services by 2020-21. It was followed by the NHS long-term plan in 2019, which committed an additional £2.3 billion a year for the expansion and transformation of mental health services in England by 2024, so that an additional 2 million people could get the NHS-funded mental health support that they need. It is also funding the increase in the frontline mental health workforce to meet the plan’s ambition for 27,000 additional mental health staff by 2023-24. There were 138,610 full-time equivalent mental health staff at the end of 2022, an increase of 8,900 on the previous year and of 20,700 on December 2010, so the mental health workforce in the NHS is radically bigger. In total, we spent around £3 billion more on mental health last year compared with four years ago. That is an increase of a quarter.

Backed by this huge investment, we are expanding access to NHS talking therapies for adults to meet the long-term plan’s ambition for an additional 1.9 million people to access National Institute for Health and Care Excellence-approved treatments for conditions such as anxiety and depression. From starting small in 2008, around 1.2 million people are now accessing NHS talking therapies every year, with 98% waiting less than 18 weeks for their treatment and 90% waiting less than six weeks. This means that we are delivering well over our national waiting time targets of 95% and 75% respectively.

Local mental health services are transforming community mental health care to give 370,000 adults and older adults with severe mental illnesses greater choice and control over their care and to support them to live well in their communities. We recognise that poor mental health is a major cause of sickness absence in the workplace and we are providing support to employees and employers on mental health in the workplace. We have announced additional measures to support workplace mental health, including a package to support the long-term sick and disabled to remain in or return to work. This includes £200 million for digital mental health to modernise NHS talking therapies, to provide free access to wellness and clinical mental health apps for the population, and to pilot cutting-edge digital therapeutics. There will be around £75 million to expand individual placement and support services to help more people with severe mental health illnesses into employment.

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Neil O’Brien]

I will make a little progress first.

We know that the number of children and young people experiencing mental ill health is rising, and that many of them will continue to experience mental health problems later in life. Spending on children and young people’s mental health continues to grow, from £841 million in 2019-20 to £995 million a year later, and now to £1.1 billion in 2022-23. This means that we are helping more children and young people than ever before. In 2021-22, there were over 743,000 new referrals to children’s and young people’s mental health services, which is 41% higher than the year before.

--- Later in debate ---

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

There has been a narrative about whether it is increasing numbers of people becoming more aware of mental health that has led to more cases being reported, or whether there are actually more people suffering from mental health problems. I spoke to Michele Moran, the head on this issue for the Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust. She told me, indisputably, that we have more people suffering from mental health conditions. We only need look at the examples coming into each and every one of our surgeries to see how desperate the situation has become. Like other hon. Members, I would like to thank my staff for the work they do in supporting people with mental health problems. I will give two examples.

One example is a 13-year-old boy who has not been in school for two years. The school funded three counsellor sessions for him, but it cannot continue to give the boy the level of support he needs. This is a crucial point. Schools are very willing to help, but teachers are not mental health professionals. We need the professionals in the system, which is why Labour’s pledge to have professionals in schools matters so much. We all know how desperate the waiting list for CAMHS is and how difficult it is to get the level of support that is needed. We are left with families who are desperately struggling, having to rely on other family members and finding life incredibly difficult.

It is the same for another constituent with a 17-year-old daughter. She did not get the help she needed at the time she needed it. She could not access that primary care. What ended up happening was that she took an overdose, which she survived, but it was clear that her mental health was in such difficulties that she was sectioned. Her parents now find that only one of them is able to work, because the other parent has to be with their daughter at all times because of the difficulties she is facing. That is having a huge impact on their income and their standard of living.

In our area we have tried to do something different with the police. Right Care, Right Person is a joined-up approach from Humberside police, the clinical commissioning group—as it was at the time—local councils, mental health providers and hospitals to decide who is the right person to attend to someone in crisis, and then look at developments. It is not perfect, but it tries to address the difficulties we are having. Many of the cases the police have been sent to are still people actually struggling with their mental health, and the police, like teachers, are not the professionals always best placed to deal with someone in a mental health crisis. We are evaluating that as it goes along, but the demand for services is indisputable.

We need to take a step back a little and think about what is going on. We are talking about citizens advice bureaux providing counselling and support for people with mental health problems. The people that the citizens advice bureaux are supporting are not those who generally have mental health problems; they are people who do not have enough money to live, and their level of debt is causing them to have mental health problems. They are in a situation called negative budgeting, where, quite simply, the amount of money they have coming in is less than the amount of money going out. That is what is driving some mental health problems.

If we are to solve the mental health crisis, we must look at poverty, debt and the cost of living crisis. That is why I am so delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) said that a future Labour Government’s approach to mental health would be focused not just on health, but across the whole of Government. Until we have that joined-up approach, we will never really tackle the crisis our country faces.