Mental Health Taskforce Report
Debate between James Morris and Dan Poulter(8 years, 2 months ago)
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James Morris
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. He is right, and I will come to the need for greater accountability later in my speech.
On commissioning, the “Five Year Forward View” report states:
“The transformation we envisage will take a number of years and without clear information about what the best care pathways look like and good data on current levels of spending, access, quality and outcomes, it will be hard to assess the impact of organisational change and ensure mental health services are not disadvantaged.”
Its very first recommendation is:
“NHS England should continue to work with Health Education England…Public Health England…Government and other key partners to resource and implement Future in Mind, building on the 2015/16 Local Transformation Plans”—
which I know are in the process of being implemented—
“and going further to drive system-wide transformation of the local offer to children and young people so that we secure measurable improvements in their mental health within the next four years.”
I dwell on those recommendations because—this speaks to my hon. Friend’s point—we need more transparency on what clinical commissioning groups are spending and where. The report is clear that there is currently simply too much variability across the country. I have long been an advocate of the importance of local, decentralised decision making. It is important that clinical commissioning groups have the freedom to commission services that they think are appropriate to their local population. The report is clear that we need a more consistent approach on mental health services that focuses on collaboration and more integrated commissioning across the spectrum.
Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend reflect, in the context of the devolved settlement for services, on the importance of substance misuse services and on the impact that the fragmentation of those services away from other mental health services may have had on patient care?
James Morris
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. We need to deal with some of the issues to do with fragmentation in the system—he refers to substance misuse. The thrust of the recommendations in the report is about making sure we have a more integrated approach to commissioning mental health services across the piece.
The second important facet of the implementation challenges that the report throws up is research into mental health services. It mentions the need to have a proper, coherent 10-year plan for research into mental health to fill what are, as many of us would agree, big gaps in the evidence base.