Mental Health

Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I will proceed with my speech for a little longer, if I may.

We are seeing the prospect of very real progress, and we as a Government need to give careful thought to which areas to prioritise. We do not have a monopoly of wisdom in this area, which is why we set up the independent mental health taskforce that is led by Paul Farmer, the chief executive of Mind. We will receive its report early in the new year. It will follow a successful independent report produced by the cancer taskforce, chaired by Harpal Kumar. I think that it is a good way of uniting the Government, Members in all parts of the House, and the mental health campaigning charities, so that we can decide together on the key areas that we want to transform in the coming years.

We are still working on the detailed planning, but we have already announced the provision of £2 billion of additional mental health funding over the course of this Parliament, which will benefit CAMHS, perinatal mental health treatment, the treatment of eating disorders, and talking therapy. Some of that funding is a result of promises made by the coalition Government which we have said we will honour, and some is a result of promises that we ourselves have made.

I agree with the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree that as we increase investment in mental health, we need greater transparency in respect of the way in which that money is spent. I am pleased to say that next June, following consultation with the King’s Fund, there will for the first time be independently assured Ofsted-style ratings that will tell us very simply, CCG area by CCG area, whether mental health provision in the health economy as a whole is outstanding, is good, requires improvement, or is inadequate. As far as I know, ours is the first country in the world to do that. The hospital sector underwent the same process in the wake of Mid Staffs, and, on the basis of that experience, I believe that it will lead to a dramatic reduction in variation and an improvement in care as people are given independent information about how their services compare with those of their peers. That increased transparency will also mean the development of a new mental health data set, which will enable us to collect more and better data and then share them with the House, debate them, and learn what needs to be learnt.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

[Mr Hunt]

I will give way once more.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I recognise the thoughtful case that the Secretary of State is making in saying that things are not good enough but they are getting better, but I must say to him—in a non-partisan way—that when it comes to funding, the stories about funding in my area do not match what we are hearing from him today. There is a story on the Manchester Evening News website about a £1.5 million cut in Greater Manchester.

[Mr Hunt]

We, as a Government, make commitments and choices in terms of where we want resources to go, and we then have a duty to ensure that they are followed up locally. As we know from our experience of the health service, sometimes—under all Governments—that advice is followed, and sometimes it is not. The introduction of proper independent ratings, area by area, will enable us to expose the areas that are not making the commitment to mental health that they should be making. As has been pointed out many times by Members in all parts of the House, failing to invest what is needed in mental health is a false economy. It stores up problems for accident and emergency departments and for the providers of mental health services, because late intervention means more expensive intervention, and it is of course a very real human tragedy for the individuals concerned.