Mental Health Bill [Lords]

Lola McEvoy Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 19th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Darren Paffey]

My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point, and I fully agree that the wait facing many people is excruciating. I have had constituents come to me in tears because they do not know whether their children will make it to adulthood. The services are just not there, and they are subject to hugely long waits and often inadequate provision. These changes are crucial.

Of course, there are some truly commendable local initiatives in Southampton that are making a real difference on the ground. I pay tribute to services such as The Lighthouse, an invaluable out-of-hours mental health support centre for adults in crisis, and No Limits, a brilliant charity that has for many years provided a wide range of health and wellbeing support schemes to children and young people across the city. These organisations exemplify the compassion and commitment of professionals and volunteers to those who need their services. Let us be clear, though: however dedicated those services and the people within them may be, they are operating under immense pressure. Demand has outpaced capacity, and that is why national action is so urgently needed to match that local effort with investment, modernisation and the workforce expansion required to ensure that no one is left behind.

There are two essential pillars upon which real improvement in mental health provision has to be built: the legal framework, which the Bill rightly seeks to modernise, and, as colleagues from across the Chamber have mentioned, the funding that underpins the delivery of services. Reforming the law is a vital step, but without sustained investment in frontline mental health care we risk changing the rules without changing the reality for patients.

[Lola McEvoy (Darlington) (Lab)]

In my constituency we have a statistically significant suicide rate; I have mentioned several times in this place that I know seven men who have taken their own life. Does my hon. Friend agree that while funding is important, early intervention and preventive care in mental health services is also really good money, well spent?

[Darren Paffey]

As a former cabinet member for children’s services, I have learned through experience that early intervention will always be far better value for money than reactive services, which are obviously very necessary but often come too late.

We need both compassionate, up-to-date legislation and the resources to make it meaningful in practice. The Bill will bring our mental health laws into the 21st century. As has been mentioned, the Mental Health Act is as old as the Secretary of State—I am sad to say that both he and the Act are still younger than I am—and its provisions no longer reflect our understanding of mental health or the standards of dignity and agency that we now rightly expect. These reforms will put patient voices at the centre. I am pleased that for the first time patients will have greater rights to make their wishes known and to be involved in decisions about their own care. No one could make that case more eloquently than my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock.

The Bill also rightly recognises the needs of children and young people, too many of whom are falling through the cracks. One of the major factors affecting their mental health is the pervasive presence of social media. There is growing and compelling evidence that addictive algorithms are leading to increasing anxiety, depression and low self-esteem. Add to that the impacts of cyber-bullying, social comparison and 24-hour peer pressure and it is little surprise that there is real damage to the mental wellbeing of our young people.

In my constituency, we have seen two tragic, heartbreaking deaths that were very much about mental health, in which online forces led people to the terrible decision to die by suicide. We must take action both to prevent and to react to poor mental health. The Bill gives young people the right to express their views in writing and requires professionals to take those views seriously. Every child deserves support, not silence, and the Bill will take us in the right direction.

As I have said, the reforms in the Bill are important, but will Ministers confirm that they will be backed up by the funding needed to deliver sustainable mental health services in England? I welcome the fact that the Government have committed an additional £680 million to mental health services this year. I urge Ministers to get that money out of Whitehall quickly and to the frontline, in Southampton and other places where it is desperately needed.

I am delighted that we now have a national plan to recruit 8,500 new mental health staff, which will include placing specialist professionals in every school. When I served as cabinet member for education in Southampton, we were proud to lead the way by introducing mental health support into our local schools with a pilot initiative, which has had a clear and positive impact. I am delighted that that successful approach is being adopted on a national scale.

I am also delighted that this Labour Government are developing Young Futures hubs across the country to provide the early support for which my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Lola McEvoy) made the case so eloquently, with the aim of keeping young people well and, importantly, out of hospital in the first place where possible. We have seen the scandal of learning disabled and autistic people being locked in hospital simply because there is nowhere else for them to go. The Bill will end that inappropriate detention and strengthen community-based support.

When more people die by suicide than in traffic accidents and when patients are left in police cells simply because there is nowhere safe for them to go, radical change is the only responsible path. We must strive to achieve that change through this Mental Health Bill.