Mental Health Treatment and Support

Debate between Jeff Smith and Rosena Allin-Khan

Wednesday 7th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dr Allin-Khan]

It has been a pleasure to work with the hon. Member on the draft Mental Health Bill. However, as I will say later in my speech, I have little confidence that the draft Mental Health Bill will move beyond the draft stage. We need to debate the issues in the House, to ensure that what we know needs to be fixed is actually fixed, so that we can help people in our communities, including black people, who are more likely to be detained under the Mental Health Act, and people with autism and neurodiversity, who are mistreated simply as a result of having that diagnosis, so that their lives can be better lived. We need these issues to come before the House, so that we can debate them and move forward.

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an important point about the demand on A&E, but there is demand on other public services as well. When I have been out with the police in south Manchester, I have been shocked by the sheer amount of time they spend dealing with people in mental health crisis. I am sure we all know the amount of time our staff spend dealing with people in mental health crisis. Does she agree that it is a false economy not to invest properly in mental health services, because of the impact on other public services?

[Dr Allin-Khan]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point; he is right. It is also a false economy because of the impact mental ill health has on families. Not investing in one person’s mental ill health not only has an impact on their working and earning potential, but has a knock-on impact on that of their parents, siblings and other family members. People are currently sitting at home on suicide watch for their children because they cannot get access to the timely help and treatment they need. This is Tory Britain.

What has been the response from the Government to these alarming facts? Ministers have junked the 10-year mental health plan and binned thousands of responses to the consultation. Seni’s law, set out in a private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Steve Reed), passed unanimously, but it has not been fully implemented. It was passed almost five years ago and there have been three subsequent Ministers, and yet we are in the highly unusual situation where it has not been commenced in full. Who exactly is against the monitoring of the disproportionate use of force? The House certainly was not against it when the Bill was passed.

The Government have announced plans for new mental health hospitals, but those new hospitals are not new. The hospitals announced on 25 May—Surrey and Borders, Derbyshire and Merseycare—were already in the pipeline.

Let us talk about the Minister’s own patch, to really see the scale of the issue. At his closest hospital, adults experiencing a mental health crisis waited 11,000 hours in A&E last year. There are over 5,000 children and 40,000 adults stuck on mental health waiting lists across his integrated care board. Thousands of local people were turned away from services before treatment; I am sure the Minister will agree that that is unacceptable. As ever, we have smoke and mirrors when we need bricks and mortar. If this seems bleak, that is because it is.