Mental Health Treatment and Support

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Wednesday 7th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

I think the whole House agrees that there is a mental health crisis, but the Minister’s presentation simply will not do. It was like a series of numbers read from a brief prepared by somebody who is remote from the reality of life in our country. It sounded complacent and like it was coming from on high, rather than from real experience.

I hope the House will not mind if I illustrate the general points I want to make by referring to my own area, as the experiences I am going to relate have a general significance for the country as a whole. First, let me agree with my Front-Bench colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan), that the seed beds that are creating the great demand for mental health services lie in the social and economic conditions that have been created following 13 years of failed government. My constituency is 529th out of 533 English seats in social mobility—it is one of the most immobile socially. A child who is born today in the local hospital will die younger than those elsewhere in the country if they are in deprivation; there is no chance whatsoever of getting out of the crisis that so many families face, given the absence of social mobility across the country, but especially in areas such as mine. I am talking about deprivation where, in a constituency such as mine, access to a house, green space, healthy living and all the things one should expect to be able to achieve as a human being in one of the richest countries in the world are simply not available. That is the seed bed for the mental health crisis. I speak about my area, but this is a generic problem, as we all know. Even the Minister seemed to concede that in one of his responses, although the idea that the Government will somehow address the problems they have created after 13 years is preposterous.

The Minister talks a good talk on the Government’s intentions, but under his Government NHS staff wages have fallen, and nursing bursaries have been cut, as have mental health beds. In my area of Yorkshire we have lost a quarter of our mental health beds since 2010—since the Conservatives came into power and Labour was last in government. The loss of a bed may not sound much, but if we think about it, we see that dozens and perhaps hundreds of people would use that bed in a year. Every bed lost has a huge impact on a series of individuals, families and even communities. The same applies to the loss of nurses and other qualified staff; these things are in decline. So it is no good the Minister standing there and repeating stuff that has been provided to him by the civil service.

It is scandalous that in my area of West Yorkshire 10,000 people in a single year were released from acute hospital with a recommendation that they receive mental health treatment and all of them failed to get a mental health appointment. They were then removed from the list without any opportunity to receive even the basic courtesy of a single half-hour meeting. Beyond that, in the same year, 60,000 patients in Yorkshire had to be referred to a provider outside their area. Let us just think about this: we are talking about people with mental health problems being sent to an area that is unfamiliar to them, miles away from anywhere they know or feel comfortable and loved in, in order to receive basic treatment. It is not acceptable that that is happening in Yorkshire.

Suicide has been mentioned by a number of colleagues, from all parts of the House. In West Yorkshire, the figure for men committing suicide is over 20 per 100,000, whereas the figure for the country as a whole is 16 per 100,000. Let us just think about that. It is because of the deprivation and the problems we face in our area. Why should we put up with a postcode lottery that fails to address the mental health needs of young people, with the result that we have a quarter more suicides in West Yorkshire than in the rest of the country? That is shocking, but this is the kind of society that the Government have created and they have then cut the services that would provide the basic support that a civilised society should provide.

Let me refer to two profoundly shocking cases, which I am sure are reproduced everywhere in the country. The first involves a family who have an 18-year-old daughter. She has a mental health issue and it has led to her becoming immobilised physically. She was admitted to an acute hospital over the weekend—she is unable to move. The hospital insisted that she left yesterday, but there is no care package and no assistance for her. The doctor said, “My advice to you is to get some treatment, but you won’t get it on the NHS because you’ll wait for years. Your need is urgent. Go to a private practitioner.” That was what he recommended. We looked it up and found it will be £3,000 per month to get the treatment. This is treatment that should be provided by a civilised Government, but we do not have a civilised Government—it is shocking. This morning, that young woman of 18 was left on her own on a sofa—not even with a commode provided—with two glasses of water and a bloomin’ sandwich while the family went off to work to try to earn the money to pay. It is a disgrace that that happens in our society.

Finally, I come to the issue of people with mental health issues in care homes. These care homes are in some ways very good, but in other ways this is a racket. We have a care home in my area that the Care Quality Commission condemned in 2020. Nothing was done by the owners to improve the situation but the CQC did not go back, presumably because of covid, until November. It then said, “This home isn’t working, so you’ve got to move everybody out.” There are people there who are close to the end of life and others who have serious mental health issues. Closing that home is going to kill some people: let us be honest and blunt about it. It appears that its private owners are removing all the people in there with these mental health issues and putting them somewhere else, with no reference whatsoever and no care for people who have basically been commodities for them to use—but they are investing in the home. I have spoken to the CQC and asked: are those fit and proper persons to run such a home to care for people with mental health crises? My argument is that they are not and they have proved the point. They did not even go to appeal and the staff are being left on the scrapheap.

We have had a Government who, through austerity and the particular form of economic society they have created, have developed a major mental health crisis and then cut the required services. There is no prospect of their doing anything else to improve the situation. This is a serious problem. We must imagine ourselves in the situation of the family in the case I illustrated. This is a crisis that echoes throughout the land and it is not acceptable.

I finish on this point. We do need money putting into our mental health services, as everyone would agree. But why do the Government not start by saying that the staff—the carers, cleaners and all the clinical staff—get a proper rise? That would at least be a decent way to try to retain some of those people in house for now.

[Several hon. Members rose—]