Oral Answers to Questions

Layla Moran Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Select Committee.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

What we measure is often what we end up improving, and one of the great assets of Lord Darzi’s report is the technical annex with its 330 analyses. It is incredibly useful; it is a baseline. Will the Secretary of State make sure that it is updated yearly?

[Wes Streeting]

That is a great constructive challenge. I am absolutely committed to transparency and to keeping that dataset updated in the way that the hon. Lady requests. We are not going to get everything right and sometimes we are not going to make progress as fast as we would like, but where that is the case we are never going to duck it or pretend that things are better than they are. The reason that we will succeed where the previous Government failed is that we are willing to face up to the challenges in the NHS rather than pretend that they do not exist.

NHS Performance: Darzi Investigation

Layla Moran Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I must make progress. There are lots of speakers and little time.

Secondly, there will be a shift from sickness to prevention. It will mean that we take action to give our children a healthier and happier life, flattening the curve of rising pressures that threaten to overwhelm the NHS by building a healthier society, which will help to build a healthier economy.

Thirdly, there will be a shift from analogue to digital. Upgrading the NHS app will give patients real choice and control over their own healthcare, creating a single patient record owned by the patient and shared across the system so that every part of the NHS has a full picture of the patient that they are treating. Getting the NHS working hand in glove with our country’s leading scientists will put modern technology and equipment in the hands of NHS staff, and patients at the front of the queue for the latest treatments.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

rose—

[Wes Streeting]

I must begin to conclude my remarks, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I see that the Chair of the Select Committee on Health and Social Care is seeking my eye. Given that I will be before her Committee soon and know where my bread is buttered, I give way.

[Layla Moran]

The Secretary of State is very kind indeed. I can take no credit for what I am about to say, which comes from reports on prevention and digital transformation published by the previous Select Committee, which he would do very well to look at. What those reports say is very much echoed in Lord Darzi’s report—particularly that the place-based narratives about embedding the NHS into our communities are key, as is reform of Government as a whole, and embedding health in every Department. Will he say a bit more about reform in Government, and not just reform in the NHS?

[Wes Streeting]

I strongly agree with the Chair of the Select Committee and commend the work of the previous Committee, to which she refers. She has certainly given me some revision for the first meeting that I will attend. To answer her question, she is absolutely right that digital transformation and place-based healthcare planning are key. This Government will have a much sharper focus on health inequalities than the previous Government did. In fact, if we consider the NHS over the past 30 or 40 years, even when it has performed well overall, and patients in every part of the country have received access to timely care, some health systems have still been more challenged than others. We need to be honest about the structural challenges in those areas. Secondly, she is absolutely right that, if we are serious about health and prevention, we need a serious cross-Government approach. That is why I am delighted that the Prime Minister’s mission-driven approach has already seen Departments coming together with a focus on prevention. That will deliver fruit.

This is the major surgery that our national health service needs over the next decade to make it fit for the future. There is no time to waste, so we have hit the ground running. We inherited a Care Quality Commission that is not fit for purpose. I was genuinely stunned to learn that one in five health and care providers has never been inspected; some hospitals have been left uninspected for a decade; and inspectors were sent to care homes when they had never met someone with dementia. The Conservatives did not think that patients would like the answers, so they stopped asking the questions. This Labour Government are different: we will be honest about the problems facing the health service, and serious about solving them. Our policy is radical candour.

Today I am delighted to announce that Sir Julian Hartley has been appointed the new chief executive of the CQC. He is a proven reformer with a track record of turning around large organisations, and I am confident that he will provide the leadership that staff in the CQC need to address this crisis, improve patient safety and restore confidence in the regulator. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, so this Government are taking action to turn the regulator around. That is the difference a Labour Government make.

We inherited the farce of newly qualified GPs facing unemployment. Patients could not get a GP appointment, while GPs could not get a job, so we cut red tape, found the funding and are recruiting an extra 1,000 GPs. That is the difference a Labour Government make. We have tabled a motion to ban junk food ads targeted at children —our first step towards making our country’s children the healthiest generation that has ever lived. That is the difference a Labour Government make. Just this week, the Secretary of State for Science and Technology and I announced funding to produce new cutting-edge cancer treatments: a new blood test that can detect 12 different cancers. We are backing Britain’s scientists to save lives. That is the difference a Labour Government make.

Of course, strikes in the NHS have cost taxpayers billions. Patients saw 1.5 million operations and appointments cancelled. The Conservatives saw strikes as an opportunity to scapegoat NHS staff, so they let the strikes rage on. In fact, the shadow Health Secretary had not even bothered to meet the junior doctors since March. This Government do not exploit problems; we solve them. I called the junior doctors on day one and met them in week one, and in just three weeks, we had negotiated a deal to end the strikes. That is the difference a Labour Government make.

Those are just our first steps. Rebuilding the NHS will not be easy and it will take time, but we have done it before and we will do it again. Along with the millions of dedicated staff in health and social care across our country, this can be the generation that takes the NHS from the worst crisis in its history to build an NHS fit for the future—an NHS that is there for us when we need it, with world-class care for the many, not just the few. That is the change that Britain voted for; that is the change we will deliver together; and that change has already begun.

Oral Answers to Questions

Layla Moran Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

The Conservative party lauded that plan during the general election, when I think the public delivered their verdict on the progress that it had made. NHS dentistry is non-existent in huge parts of the country. We will stick with some aspects of the previous Government’s dental recovery plan because they are the right solutions, but there are gimmicks that we will not proceed with. We will come forward with a serious plan to reform the dental contract, which the Conservatives committed to in 2010 but failed to do in every single year of their 14 years.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

I have a constituent who has been trying to get a dentist appointment for a year. They have painful abscesses, cannot sleep and cannot eat using the right side of their mouth. We need to get on with this. I note that a review of the NHS has been launched, but the British Dental Association is concerned that that review will delay the changes to NHS dentistry that are so desperately needed. Will the Secretary of State give us a timeline for when we will see change?

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for her question and congratulate her on her re-election to the House. She is right to point to the detrimental impact that the Conservatives’ failure is having on people’s lives. In fact, in 1948, when the national health service was founded, Nye Bevan received a letter from a woman who had worked her entire life in the Lancashire cotton mills about how the dentistry she was given by the national health service had given her dignity and the freedom to associate in any company. What a tragedy that 76 years later, the Conservative party has squandered and destroyed that legacy to the point where people are suffering not just pain and agony, but the indignity of being unable to find a job and unable to socialise in polite company because they are ashamed of the state of their rotting teeth.

The hon. Member is absolutely right: Lord Darzi is conducting a review on the state of the NHS, and it will report in September. That is not preventing us from making progress, talking to the BDA and working within the Department and across the sector to get those 700,000 appointments up and running as a matter of urgency. I look forward to reporting the progress to her and other right hon. and hon. Members.

Oral Answers to Questions

Layla Moran Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Stephenson]

I completely agree with the hon. Lady, which is why this Government became the first Government ever to introduce a long-term workforce plan. Retention is one of the key pillars of the long-term workforce plan, and we are already seeing that deliver the result of keeping more staff in our NHS.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

4. If she will make an assessment of the potential impact of the level of accessibility to dental appointments on urgent dental and oral surgery services.

[Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)]

7. What recent steps she has taken to increase capacity in NHS dental care.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Dame Andrea Leadsom)]

I am determined to ensure that everybody who needs NHS dental care can receive it. We have already implemented a package of reforms to improve access and provide fairer remuneration for dentists. That has had an effect, with 1.7 million more adults being seen, 800,000 more children being seen and a 23% increase in NHS activity in the past year. We know we need to do much more, and our dentistry recovery plan will be published shortly, setting out a big package of change.

[Layla Moran]

I listened carefully to what the Minister said. That change has not come to Oxfordshire, for sure—it is in a dire state. An Oxford resident wrote to me saying that when his NHS practice closed, he rang a dozen others across the county. Each one said they were offering NHS services but, in fact, they were not; they were only offering private care. In this cost of living crisis, people simply cannot afford that. As a result, they are waiting in A&E rather than getting treatment, and that ends up in their having oral surgery. What is the Minister doing now to improve the situation in Oxfordshire and across the country?

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

I am incredibly sympathetic to what the hon. Lady says. In fact, in Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West integrated care board, the number of adults seen by an NHS dentist rose in the 24 months to June 2023 from 448,000 to 485,000, with a similar increase in the percentage of children seen. The situation is improving, but I completely agree with her that we need to do more, and we will be coming forward shortly with a big package of dental recovery plan reforms.

Oral Answers to Questions

Layla Moran Excerpts

Tuesday 5th December 2023 Commons Chamber

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

1. What steps she is taking to improve the commissioning of primary care dental services for vulnerable people.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

16. What recent assessment she has made of the potential impact of levels of availability of dentistry appointments on other NHS services.

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Victoria Atkins)]

May I, through you, Madam Deputy Speaker, wish Mr Speaker a very speedy recovery?

As Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, I want to reform our NHS and social care system to make it faster, simpler and fairer. Dentistry is a critical part of that. Integrated care boards are responsible for identifying areas of local need and determining the priorities for investment. NHS England published guidance in October this year to help ICBs use their commissioning flexibilities within the national dental contractual framework, and I will be looking carefully at how the boards are identifying need and investment across England, including for vulnerable people.

Mental Health Treatment and Support

Layla Moran Excerpts

Wednesday 7th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

There is no doubt that our mental health system is broken. Like many other Members, I receive hundreds of emails from my constituents about the dire state of mental health services, and there is a story for every age and every system failure, but today I want to focus on young people, particularly students.

It will come as no surprise that the Mental Health Foundation found that 40% of students are not coping well with their anxiety. In Oxfordshire, a survey by The Tab in 2022 found a staggering 82% of students at Oxford Brookes University had self-medicated with drugs or alcohol to cope with mental health issues. Where students know that they cannot rely on the NHS, an added burden is put on university staff. Tutors increasingly find themselves acting as therapists or counsellors for their overburdened, ill or anxious students.

Oxford University is working hard to improve services. It has come up with a joint mental health committee and a more common approach across the colleges and departments. It deserves praise for that, but the students I have spoken to have made it clear that

“University wellbeing services are not and cannot be a substitute for adequate mental health care”

and those gaps have dire consequences when severe mental health issues are left untreated. My constituents Jacquie and Mark faced every parent’s worst nightmare when their son Rory reached crisis point. Rory was suffering from anxiety and depression and found no support after a year of absence. He tragically committed suicide at university at just 22. His parents told me that

“we can’t bring Rory back, but we can help other young people preparing to go to uni.”

They are calling for a statutory duty of care for universities, which would force them to take proactive steps and intervene where a student is clearly at risk of harm. It is just common sense. It already exists between employers and employees. All we are asking is for the same duty of care to apply to students.

But, as we all know, the problems in young people’s mental health services are not restricted to those at university. So many people tell me the system is broken: parents, teachers, educational psychologists and clinical psychologists all identify the same failings. One parent wrote to me:

“I am breaking my heart listening to my son saying horrible things about himself, threatening to take his life, and struggling with his mental health in general. Next year we would have been on the waiting list for four years and nothing will probably happen.”

That story is not unique.

So it is left to voluntary organisations and local authorities to step in where this Government are clearly failing. Oxfordshire Mind and Restore do incredible work. Last year, I visited The Abingdon Bridge, a fantastic charity that provides specialist support for 13 to 25-year-olds. When I visited, it had 50 young people on its waiting list, who had to wait up to 24 weeks for an assessment and a further 10 weeks for counselling. Shockingly, that is still much shorter than CAMHS, where the waiting list is between two and four years.

We know how to fix this; it is about more funding. A senior healthcare professional in Oxfordshire told me that

“every pound spent on a child’s mental health saves thousands in the future.”

It is this Government who are failing our young people and their parents. The Government are dragging their feet. Young people and their parents deserve so much better than this.

Covid Pandemic: Testing of Care Home Residents

Layla Moran Excerpts

Wednesday 1st March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Helen Whately]

I do remember many of those SI debates. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that it was not political decision making as he suggests. At every step of the way, Ministers such as I, the Health Secretary and of course the Prime Minister were making incredibly difficult decisions but always trying to do the right thing to save people’s lives and to protect people from that cruel virus which particularly attacked those who were most vulnerable, such as the frail elderly. In doing so, we continuously took public health advice. The way to look into everything that happened is indeed through the public inquiry: that is where the evidence is being provided and that is the forum in which the reflections will be taken and the lessons can be learned.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

My heart goes out to the bereaved families and I cannot imagine what they must be feeling again today. My heart also goes out to care workers, many of whom lost their lives having contracted covid. Many also survived but are now living with long covid and have lost their livelihoods. The Minister may be aware that advice from the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council that would give compensation to just some of those brave workers is currently with the Department for Work and Pensions. In a recent meeting with me, the Minister told me that it could take years for that to be taken up. What conversations has this Minister had with the DWP and, if it will take years, will her Department set up a compensation scheme so that those brave workers get the support they deserve?

[Helen Whately]

As the hon. Lady says, care workers were among those on the frontline during the pandemic and they had some incredibly difficult experiences. They took the risk of catching covid and, very sadly, some care workers and NHS workers were among those who lost their lives. Others have long covid. The question of compensation is currently with the Department for Work and Pensions. The Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove), is in his place on the Front Bench: his Department is looking at this and will respond in due course.

Access to GP Services and NHS Dentistry

Layla Moran Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I will conclude my speech by talking about what a Labour Government will do, but let me answer his direct point about the range of options through which people should be able to access their GP. I value patient choice. Thinking back to my experience of accessing NHS services last year—as many people know, I did quite a lot of mystery shopping on the NHS—I had a range of interactions with GPs. Some were face-to-face. Some interactions at my GP surgery were not with my GP but with a nurse, which was entirely appropriate and much appreciated. Some of my engagements with my GP were over the telephone. I also had a video consultation with a dermatologist. I really valued that flexibility and range of approaches.

I think that the future for primary care has to be different courses for different horses. Of course, people should have a right to see their GP when they want to see their GP—I am clear about that—but there is also a range of ways in which we can offer more flexible access to GPs, particularly for working people who do not necessarily want to traipse down to the GP surgery in the middle of the afternoon if it is something that could be dealt with over the phone or on a video call.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

The shadow Secretary of State is making a powerful speech. I commend in particular the point he made that people still trust their doctors. They are desperate to see them, even if it is online. A 74-year-old constituent of mine contacted me and said that he asked for an online appointment but it would take him 30 days to get there. He appreciates that the issue is not with GPs but with the Government’s lack of planning for the number of GPs who can provide that service in Oxfordshire.

[Wes Streeting]

The hon. Lady makes a powerful point. How is it that the NHS can be one of the largest employers in the world—it employs 1.2 million people—but does not have a workforce plan and strategy that says, “This is the workforce need that we have today, this is what the workforce need will be in the foreseeable future and, in the longer term, this is how we need to change the shape of the workforce to take into account advances in medicine and modern technology, and the changing demographics of our society”?

We gave the Government the opportunity to commission such a report when we debated the Health and Care Bill. It was supported on a cross-party basis, including by the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, the right hon. Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt)—sadly, he is not able to be with us at the moment—yet the Government voted against it. What is it about the ostrich mentality of the Secretary of State and his ministerial team—or, I suspect even more, that of the Treasury—that they would rather bury their heads in the sand, pretend there is no problem with workforce and not even count the numbers of doctors and nurses needed because they worry that the Treasury might face up to the reality of what they need to provide?

Special Educational Needs and Children’s Mental Health Services

Layla Moran Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue. I congratulate the hon. Member for Newbury (Laura Farris) on securing this timely debate in Children’s Mental Health Week.

Over the past year—frankly, five years—the number of parents writing to me about their children and the lack of support has grown exponentially. I was a teacher before I was an MP, and I commend the speech made by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake), because she is right that this is about allowing young people to be themselves. The word “special” is the right one: just look at the number of Nobel prize winners with neurodiversity in their make-up. When I taught maths and physics, these children were often the brightest, most interesting people in the room. They should never be seen as a burden.

The way the system treats families and children who are neurodiverse makes it so difficult for them that it is understandable how that goes on to affect their mental health. One family contacted me about Poppy—I have changed her name—who is 12. As previously described, there was violent behaviour in the household, and the family was incredibly worried. It took months to even get the GP to refer to CAMHS. The mother said to me:

“Mrs Moran, to be honest, you are my last hope. I am suffering with both my physical and mental health and quite honestly I do not have the energy left to continue fighting the system.”

We are also in a perverse situation where even more professionals are writing to me. I would be curious to know if that is the same for other hon. Members. This is new. GPs are also writing to me, as are educational psychologists, because they all recognise that CAMHS is broken. I had one psychologist write to me saying that he no longer refers to CAMHS. He said that social services and CAMHS are so broken that the only thing he can do is keep children on his books because he worries that if he loses contact with them they will not get anything at all. How is this system not failing our young people? It absolutely is.

My first question to the Minister is on the lack of educational psychologists in this country. My local county council is doing its very best; it is one of the F40 councils and is twelfth-lowest in the country when it comes to the high needs block. I said, “If you had a magic wand and could ask for anything from the Minister, what would it be?” and the council said, “More educational psychologists.” We currently fund only 200 training places in the country. There is only one educational psychologist for every 5,000 young people, which is nowhere near enough. Tackling that issue would go a huge way towards immediately helping to alleviate the backlog.

In the interim, there are amazing third-party groups that are helping. There is Shift, which is an informal parent group in Abingdon, set up by Sally and Andy Foulsham. They run it, provide support and help families navigate the system. There is also The Abingdon Bridge, which is the only wellbeing and mental health charity for young people in Vale of White Horse. It focuses on 18 to 25-year-olds. It is particularly worried about the 16 to 18-year olds that it finds because, if they are referred to CAMHS, the waiting lists are so long that they then drop off that cliff edge. Strangely, the charity cannot access funding from the CCG because of the way that the funding works. Could the Minister help me help The Abingdon Bridge to access more funding?

To conclude where I started, we absolutely must appreciate that these children deserve the best, and deserve more, but the current system is failing them. There is a perverse disincentive in the system, where a school must basically pay the first £6,000 of the funding. We need a national SEND strategy that solves the problem once and for all. Without that, we risk failing our children and our country in the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Fovargue. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris) for securing this important debate on special educational needs and children’s mental health services. As we can see by the number of Members who have attended the debate, this is clearly a significant issue across many parts of the country. Unfortunately, the Minister for Care and Mental Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan), is unable to be here today because she is self-isolating, so I will do my best to answer hon. Members’ questions. I am sure we can follow up on anything that I am not able to cover in my remarks.

I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) for sharing her personal experience, which illustrates some of the struggles that people face. She outlined the positives and negatives in her remarks. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly) for sharing his son’s experience, which is unfortunately not uncommon.

My own postbag reflects many of the comments that have been made in the debate. Children are often not getting the help and support they need at the early stages, which often leads to more difficult interventions later that could have been avoided if the support was in place. The collaboration locally between health and education is often not where it should be. I am here not to deny any of the remarks made in debate, but to set out what is being done to address these issues, which have been in place for many years. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North that funding is not necessarily the only factor here; it is also about how services are brought together. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury said, it is about accountability for how those services are delivered.

In March last year, we published the covid mental health and wellbeing recovery action plan, which includes £31 million to improve autism and learning disability services. There is £42 million to continue funding projects to support young people and families with special educational needs. There are funding pots available, but we are hearing that they are not making it to the families who need them or to the services being provided. In the short time that I have, I hope to be able to set out how we aim to resolve some of those issues.

The demand for services has increased. There is no doubt that the demand for CAMHS, ADHD assessments, autism assessments and diagnosis has increased over time, but waiting times are also dismally short of where they should be. According to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, which provides evidence-based guidance on many of these areas, children and young people who are referred for an autism diagnosis should have a diagnostic assessment within 13 weeks. We have heard from many colleagues, including my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury, that it takes around two years. My hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland) cited three years. Of course, my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North cited his son’s experience, and the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) also spoke about this issue. We can see that it is a problem across the country.

For ADHD diagnosis, NICE guidelines do not recommend a specific waiting time, but they set out recommendations for how services should support and manage children who need a diagnosis and their families, for how such children should be supported through education, and for general support as well. We want every area of the country to meet NICE guidelines but, sadly, that is not happening in many places. To make sure that we get on top of the situation and reduce the delays, we want to work towards providing an assessment within the recommended 13 weeks in order to deliver a timely diagnosis—not just so that they get a diagnosis, but so that the interventions are there to help and support young people and their families.

There are three key areas where I think we can improve things. The SEND review, which was touched on a couple of times in the debate, is a joint collaboration between the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care. It is in progress, and we expect its findings to be announced fairly soon—I am talking about weeks, rather than months. Following the recommendations from that, a Green Paper will be published. It will follow a 12-week period in which I encourage all Members to take part in the process and to highlight many of the experiences that we have heard today. We have talked about the funding that is being announced, but often that goes to health and does not get into schools. I met representatives from one of my schools only last week, and the joined-up working locally between education and health just is not happening. That reflects the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury that accountability for who is responsible for doing what, and the joint working, is currently not happening.

[Layla Moran]

Will the Minister comment on access to funding for third-sector organisations, which are often more expert at offering advice and support that families need?

[Maria Caulfield]

Absolutely. Services are commissioned locally. Part of the issue is that there is no accountability for when services are not commissioned. The funding that is put forward needs to look at all service providers, and the third sector is often well placed to provide those services.

To touch on long waits, NHS England is working to ensure that CAMHS have embedded diagnostic pathways for autism and ADHD as a core part of their work. A sum of £13 million is going in to improve those pathways and identify those at risk of crisis; £2.5 million of that funding will test different approaches to diagnostic pathways and ensure that they are backed by research and are evidence-based. In addition, NHS England wants to develop a single point of access to ensure that referrals are triaged, and that individuals do not stay on lengthy waiting lists. We have heard today of the difficulties caused by not having a single point of access. I have met families in my constituency. As the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) said, we are the last refuge and point of contact when they cannot get anywhere else.

We know that school settings can provide an invaluable opportunity to identify autistic children early in life. We are investing £600,000 in significantly expanding an autism early diagnosis pilot in Bradford. That will test at least 100 schools over the next three years to assess whether new approaches to achieving a faster diagnosis can be rolled out across the country. The early findings from that pilot are positive. Education staff report that they are better able to identify children and put in place the support they need to thrive in education. Local areas will look to upskill mainstream staff to better identify children’s needs. In Manchester, a project to support early identification and diagnosis in young children involves health visitors identifying those who show signs associated with autism and fast-tracking their assessment, with additional post-diagnostic support for families.

The issue for many years has been the lack of a national strategy, but that is changing. What we want, when pilot studies show good initial results, is to roll them out across the country. In the next year, on top of the £1.5 billion spent in the past two years, we are providing an additional £1 billion of high-needs funding for the education of children with more complex needs. The aim of that funding is to reduce waiting lists and variations in practice, make navigation pathways less complex, and improve the speed and quality of diagnosis.

Those points tackle some of the issues around waiting lists, but accountability was the main thread of the introductory remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury. At the moment, no one is held accountable locally if services are not commissioned. The integrated care system will be put on a statutory footing from 1 July, if the Health and Care Bill goes through on time, and ICS boards will be the accountable bodies for commissioning services. Their chief executive officer will be the accountable officer for the NHS locally and will be responsible for bringing those services together and will be accountable if that is not happening.

Since November 2019, NHS Digital has reported on waiting times for autism assessments, trying to ensure transparency in how services are delivered and highlighting areas where improvements are needed. It is incredible that, up until now, we have not had the data to hold people’s feet to the fire when services are not provided.

Children’s Mental Health

Layla Moran Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dr Allin-Khan]

My hon. Friend is always a powerful advocate when it comes to the importance of positive mental health for young people. I have visited Wales and seen at first hand the fantastic examples of what can be achieved when Labour is in power.

One in six children are suffering with probable mental health issues, but only about a third are able to access treatment. Now things are getting worse: the Conservative cost of living crisis is causing more misery, uncertainty and upheaval in the lives of millions of children and young people. For weeks the House has been witness to the impact of that Conservative cost of living crisis on people and their families across the country.

Children are going to bed cold and hungry, and their life chances are impacted because they are unable to concentrate at school. Many are watching their parents worry and cry about being unable to pay the bills. Dragging an electric heater around the house before jumping under the covers just to keep warm because there is no heating—that, for too many of us, feels far too familiar. It is how my brother and I grew up, and it will stay with me forever. I had hoped that that perpetual fear of insecurity that never leaves one was a thing of the past, but sadly not: it is alive and well in Tory Britain in 2022. This is a “cost of Johnson crisis”.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful speech that stems from her personal experience. One of the groups who seem to be falling off the cliff edge are 16 to 18-year-olds, because by the time they are referred to CAMHS, the waiting lists take them out of the range that CAMHS can deal with. Does the hon. Lady agree that that is awful, and is leaving far too many young people with nowhere to turn?

[Dr Allin-Khan]

The hon. Member is absolutely right. So many 16 to 18-year-olds find themselves on a waiting list for an extended period only to drop off it just as they turn 18, or else have one or two sessions, then turn 18 and find that there are no longer any services for them. That goes on to have a detrimental impact. This is not just a tragedy for today but a tragedy for tomorrow as well, because poor mental health in children is carried into adulthood. What happens today will impact demands for mental health services tomorrow. The old saying goes “Prevention is better than cure.” That is why we have a range of public health measures in place for children—check-ups for eyesight, hearing, and growth.