Deaths in Mental Health Care

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Monday 30th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer.

Matthew Leahy had his whole life ahead of him. He was just 20 years old when he was detained in November 2012 under the Mental Health Act and transported to the Linden Centre, a secure mental health unit in Chelmsford. Three days after his admission to what his mother, Melanie, believed was a place of safety, Matthew reported that he had been drugged and raped. Four days later, he was found hanged in his room.

Over the ensuing years, multiple inquests and inquiries into the conditions surrounding Matthew’s death have uncovered evidence of serious care failings, including the fact that Matthew’s paperwork was incomplete or missing and that no key worker had been assigned to him. It was revealed that Matthew had no care plan and that staff had falsified one after his death and backdated it.

I welcome the petition and this debate, and I want to take the opportunity to pay tribute to Matthew’s parents and all those who have campaigned so hard to get the truth, justice and accountability. I also welcome last month’s announcement by the Minister for Health, the hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), that the Government will launch

“an independent review into the serious questions raised by a series of tragic deaths of patients at the Linden Centre between 2008 and 2015.”—[Official Report, 16 October 2020; Vol. 682, c. 733.]

It is absolutely right that we commit to uncover the truth about the significant failings in the care and treatment of vulnerable patients, and that the mantra of “learning lessons” is not merely a soundbite accompanied by endless toothless reviews but results in substantive and tangible change.

No mother should ever have to go through the dreadful loss and devastation faced by Melanie Leahy and so many other people, who made difficult decisions in impossible circumstances to hand over their children to the care of others, where they believed their children would be safe. No family should have to campaign for years to forcibly expose the negligence and incompetence of a system that contributed to the death of their loved one.

We know that black people are overrepresented in mental health services and are disproportionately subject to the use of Taser on wards, and it needs to stop. I congratulate Mary Seacole House, a mental health charity in my constituency, on the work that it has done over many years to support patients with mental health problems, and on shining a light on injustices.

My question to the Minister is: how can we challenge and improve the process and culture of attaining inquiries, so that families bereaved by state neglect and wrongdoing are placed at the very heart of conversations about accountability and change, and are not blocked, bullied, stigmatised or cast aside with accusations of being a nuisance or a problem in their quest for truth and justice?