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.

Hospitals

Lola McEvoy Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Curtis (Milton Keynes North) (Lab)]

A few months ago I stood in this Chamber and told a story that I wished I did not have to tell. It was about my 91-year-old grandmother, and the night that we had to rush her to hospital with a suspected heart attack, only to be told on arrival that the average waiting time was nine and a half hours. Our brilliant NHS staff worked tirelessly, but after 14 years of Tory neglect the truth is painfully clear: our health service has been pushed to breaking point, and my family did not receive the urgent care that we needed and deserved.

I know that my story is not unique. I hear it time and again, on the doorstep, in community centres and in my constituency surgeries. There is a painful fear, shared by so many, that the NHS on which we all depend will not be there when we need it most. Let us be honest about why that is: it is not because our NHS staff are not working hard enough—far from it. They are heroes in every sense of the word.

[Lola McEvoy (Darlington) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way on his point about how brilliant our NHS staff are. First, will he commend my dad for his 40 years’ service badge as an NHS staff member? That has to be put on the record. Secondly, does my hon. Friend agree that the Government are laser-focused on supporting NHS staff to stay in the NHS, work their way up the ranks and lead a fulfilling career in serving our constituents?

[Chris Curtis]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and for the work that her family have done for our national health service.

It is not the staff’s fault that our NHS has been let down; it is because of Tory Government after Tory Government, and decision after decision. Fourteen years of Conservative mismanagement have hollowed out our health service, and I welcome the opportunity to discuss this important issue today. Although I might not see eye to eye on everything with the Liberal Democrats, there is one truth that we cannot ignore: the NHS is facing serious challenges, and real change and investment are needed. However, people back home are not crying out for more motions; they are crying out for action, for delivery, and for change that they can see and feel. With this Labour Government, they are finally getting it.

When we came into office, we did not come in to manage decline; we came in to turn things around, to rebuild, and to restore a sense of hope and pride in our public services, starting with our NHS. We have seen that work across the country, with waiting lists falling for six months in a row. In my city, this Government have finally secured funding for the new women and children’s hospital that residents in Milton Keynes—a growing city—so desperately need, and construction is set to start in 2027-28. For too long, families have walked through the doors of my local hospital, which is simply not fit for purpose and has some of the longest waiting lists in the country. Let me be clear: it is completely unacceptable that it has taken this long to get funding in place. Milton Keynes has been one of the fastest growing cities in the country for years, and we have been left with far fewer hospital beds than we deserve and far fewer than the national average.

Despite some of the comments from Conservative Members, and despite the Conservative Government plastering the new hospital on all their leaflets, how much funding was actually secured by my hospital under the last Conservative Government? Given that it was “fully funded”, one would assume the figure was 100%. Was it 50% or 10%? No, just 4% of the “fully funded” hospital promised was actually secured by the previous Government. It is this Government who have found the other 96% to ensure that we can finally build the hospital that my city so desperately deserves. We are now trying to deliver a hospital that has been delayed not by local failure, but by national dither. Thanks to this Government, I get to be the MP who delivers what Tory MP after Tory MP promised my city but failed to deliver.

I want to ensure that we do not face further delays—not just because of the health risks to my city, but because of the cost increases. I have been told that every single month this project is held up costs an extra £700,000. That £700,000 could be invested in other important projects that have been mentioned by Members across the House. One potential hold-up is the Hospital 2.0 programme, which I am told is still not complete. Will the Minister look at whether that important work will hold up projects that we know are ready to go, such as in Milton Keynes? We need to fast-track these projects through the Treasury to ensure that there are no further bureaucratic blockages once the go-ahead has been given, especially bearing in mind that we have a track record in Milton Keynes of building to budget and on time. Give us the tools and we will build the hospital.

We must also be honest about what happens after the ribbon is cut. Even if we build the hospital, our health system in Milton Keynes will still be operating under immense strain. Thanks to the legacy of the last Government, our integrated care board is one of the most, if not the most, underfunded per person in the entire country. That has real consequences. It means that places including my local hospice, Willen hospice, which has provided vital end of life care to many members of my family, are being left to scrape by. This Sunday I will be running the London marathon for our local hospice, because I care deeply about the work it does. Marathons should not be the funding model for our healthcare system. We need sustainable investment, which starts with fairer funding for our ICB and fairer treatment for a city that has been overlooked for too long.

I will support anything in this House that helps us fix our NHS, and I will work with anybody who wants to rebuild it, but I will also say this: I am proud to be a member of a Government who are finally not just talking about the problem, but getting on with the solution. Let us build that hospital, let us fund our services properly, let us fix what is broken, and let us give people back the healthcare system they so desperately deserve.

Maternal Mental Health

Lola McEvoy Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. I commend the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Laura Kyrke-Smith) for securing this hugely important debate and speaking so eloquently about her friend. As someone who has lost a close friend to suicide, I completely agree that they are not defined by their death, but by the impact they had during their life and the impact they had on other people.

Suicide is the leading cause of death among women in the six weeks to 12 months after giving birth, and maternal mental health in Winchester and across the UK is in crisis. As the Lib Dem spokesperson for mental health, I am hearing more and more stories about this from individual women. Every year, 600,000 women give birth, and one in five of those women will experience a perinatal mental health condition. This is a completely neglected mental health crisis, on an extremely large scale.

Polling from as recently as December 2024, commissioned by the campaign Delivering Better, representatives of which I am pleased are in the Public Gallery today, found that seven out of 10 women who have a negative birthing experience say that it has had a long-term impact on their mental health. A recurring theme is that women are not being listened to—that has been a theme in essentially every major maternity inquiry. Women are not listened to when they raise concerns pre, during and post labour, not listened to when they raise complaints with trusts about their care, and not listened to by successive Governments who have failed to treat this issue with the seriousness it demands. If this crisis is to be meaningfully addressed, far greater emphasis needs to be placed on the voices and experience of women and birthing people.

[Lola McEvoy (Darlington) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for giving way and thank my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Laura Kyrke-Smith) for securing the debate. Does the hon. Member agree that, given the scale of the problem and the barriers to new parents and new mothers asking for help, it is important that this Government focus on pre-emptive support, in case people are struggling with their mental health? We should assume that having a child will affect women’s mental health, and that assumption would force the Government to take a proactive approach to supporting women in that time.

[Dr Chambers]

I completely agree with the hon. Member and thank her for her important intervention. For years, we have been calling for better community healthcare. We know the demographics who are at high risk of mental health issues: not only women who are within a year of giving birth, but a whole load of other people, such as military veterans and farmers. Those groups of people need proactive help before they reach crisis point. It is more cost-effective to treat them earlier, rather than to pick up the pieces once they are in a crisis.

The Government recently announced that they will drop women’s health targets to avoid overspending, but it is clear that women’s health, including maternity care, has been deprioritised for too long. I urge them to reconsider.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lola McEvoy Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Lola McEvoy.

[Lola McEvoy (Darlington) (Lab)]

T2. Will the Secretaryof State meet me to discuss a cross-departmental pilot in my constituency, bringing together the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care, to tackle some of the immediate pressures that face child and adolescent mental health services in my area, and the impact on schooling, the local work force and family outcomes?

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

By cutting mental health waiting lists and intervening earlier, we can get this country back to health and back to work. There are 2.9 million people who are economically inactive, a large proportion owing to mental health issues. Many people can be helped back into work through talking therapies. We will put a mental health professional in every school and roll out 8,500 specialists. I would be happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss the matter further.

Mental Health Support

Lola McEvoy Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Lola McEvoy (Darlington) (Lab)]

I rise to speak about this issue on World Mental Health Day. I have championed it many times across my career and I will continue to do so in my time in this place.

My constituents—and, I am sure, those of all hon. Members—want something that we used to take for granted: a happy, decent life, with a better future for their children. For too many in Darlington, that is not the reality, and I believe that the current mental health crisis is a product of our times. I will focus my brief contribution not on those with severe mental illness, who are often in crisis, but on those who are struggling with day-to-day poor mental health.

I agree with the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans), who advocated a cross-departmental approach. Poor mental health is pushing people out of work, and that is a huge issue for the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions. A lack of child mental health support and a failure to tackle the online safety crisis for children is leading to school refusals, which is an issue not only for the Department for Education but for the economy and for future generations. Loneliness is impacting the physical health of our older people, which is an issue for the NHS. The lack of opportunity, quality work, maternal mental health services, veteran support and childcare support is driving people in my constituency to despair.

I have mentioned this before, but I will mention it again on this day: within my own network, I have lost seven men to suicide. Only one of them had a severe mental illness. In my region, we have the highest rate of male suicide and the lowest wages. I ask that we, as a Government who are committed to equality of opportunity for our regions, consider my constituency and my region for a cross-departmental pilot to tackle poor mental health before we lose any more people to avoidable deaths.

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

I now come to the Opposition spokespersons.

[Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)]

Thank you, Mr Dowd, for calling me to speak.

As a veterinary surgeon, I come from a profession that has a suicide rate four times the national average. Like many people in this Chamber, I have experienced the pain of losing friends and colleagues to suicide. That led me to become a trustee of a mental health charity for several years, and I am honoured to be the spokesperson on mental health for the Liberal Democrats.

Although we have undoubtedly focused on NHS clinical services in this debate, we often underestimate the profound impact that non-medical issues, such as living in poverty, financial worries, debt and insecure housing, can have on mental health and how they can hinder people’s recovery from a mental health crisis.

I am incredibly proud of a project that I visited just last week in my constituency of Winchester that is run by Melbury Lodge mental health hospital and the citizens advice bureau in Westminster. This project provides one-to-one advice and support to in-patients on matters relating to living in the community, from relationship and financial advice to management of debt and benefits and housing problems. Someone who ends up being admitted to a mental health unit will find that their post—correspondence relating to their benefits, mortgages and other bills—all goes to their home address, and if nobody else lives there, they will not receive any of it. When they are discharged, they may get out and find that there is a problem with their benefits, or that they have received a huge bill that they were not expecting.

Amazingly, the Melbury Lodge and Citizens Advice team have demonstrated that for every £1 spent on this project, the NHS system avoids spending on average £14.06, which is a huge return on investment. As we extrapolate out, the research shows that having the Citizens Advice service on site means that Melbury Lodge has avoided spending nearly a quarter of a million pounds. This cost avoidance is achieved through shorter in-patient stays, fewer readmissions, reduced medication and better engagement with community services. That is a staggering amount of money that can now be spent directly on clinical care. I urge the Government to look at the results of this initiative with a view to rolling it out in other parts of the country, because it is good for patients, good for NHS staff and good for the taxpayer. I am really excited that this project has been shortlisted for an NHS parliamentary award next week, and I look forward to supporting the team in person.

We need to acknowledge the impact that the lack of mental healthcare has on other public services. When I go out with the police in Winchester, they tell me that they spend between 40% and 50% of their time dealing with mental health issues in some capacity.

The hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Helena Dollimore) mentioned the cost when people in a mental health crisis, who are often already on a mental health waiting list, arrive at accident and emergency departments. One of the biggest issues raised with me by parents in Winchester is the huge delay for children who are waiting for diagnoses of ADHD and autism.

The hon. Member for Ashford (Sojan Joseph) has already mentioned that the Darzi report acknowledged that 20% of the NHS disease burden is due to mental health issues.

[Lola McEvoy]

Does the hon. Member agree that too often people confuse neurodiversity, which we should celebrate; severe mental illness, which we need to support people with and help them manage; and poor mental health, which is a day-to-day thing that can often be caused by circumstances?

[Dr Chambers]

That is a good and important point. We also need to acknowledge that people with certain issues—neurodiversity, undiagnosed ADHD or autism—who do not get the support they need are more likely to develop mental health issues as a result. It is a bit of a chicken-and egg-situation.

Finally, as I was saying, only 10% of the NHS budget is for mental health, but it is 20% of the disease burden. The obvious question people ask is: how do we afford that? When I look at the pressure on the police, A&E and the education system, the question I would ask is: how can we afford not to treat mental health properly?