Mental Health

Lord Barwell Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)]

First, I thank the Backbench Business Committee for securing this debate. In my limited experience in the House, the Committee’s debates often show the Chamber at its best. I also want to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), who is one of the stars of the 2010 intake on the Government side of the House. She is an example of the work that Lord Maples, who sadly passed away this week, had done to diversify the make-up of Members on our Benches. That is about a lot more than tokenism.

As a number of Members have said, I came fourth in the private Member’s Bill ballot. I found that out because my inbox was suddenly swamped by a large number of e-mails congratulating me, and my mobile phone and desk phone started ringing at the same time. For a Back-Bench Member it is a fairly rare opportunity to change the law of this country. I have taken my time and thought long and hard about what I wanted to bring forward. On Wednesday, I will be presenting the Mental Health (Discrimination) Bill, which was introduced by Lord Stevenson of Coddenham in the last parliamentary Session, as the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) has said. I am doing that partly for personal reasons. Two of my closest personal friends suffer from mental health conditions, and two teachers who had a very formative role in my education, when I was a teenager, have also suffered from mental health conditions. My predecessor, the former Member for Croydon Central, Andy Pelling, who some Members in the House will have known, also suffered from a mental health condition.

In addition, since I have been a Member of the House, in my surgeries I have met a significant number of constituents who are suffering, including people whose children have been detained under the Mental Health Act 1983. There is one gentleman I will never forget who came to my surgery suicidal because he had lost his job and was at risk of losing his home and the ability to support his family. A couple of weeks ago I visited the South London YMCA and met a man who had witnessed someone commit suicide and had gone to his GP for help but had not received proper help and had suffered a breakdown. His marriage had broken up, he had lost his job and he had ended up sleeping in the park. So my decision has been prompted by a mix of personal reasons and what I have seen as a constituency MP.

The Bill is supported by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Mind, Rethink Mental Illness and the Law Society. Its purpose is very simple: to remove the last significant form of discrimination in law in our society. This country has changed a huge amount since I was a young child. I remember the first Asian family moving into our road when I was growing up. Some of the people who lived in our road put pressure on the people selling their house not to sell to an Asian family. I also remember the arguments about section 28 and the language that was used in my school playground. We have made a huge amount of progress since then as a country, but we have not got there yet. To our shame, however, the law still discriminates against those with a mental health condition. An MP or a company director can be removed from their job as a result of a mental health condition even if they go on to make a full recovery. Many people who are perfectly capable of performing jury service are barred from doing so. If my private Member’s Bill is approved by the House, we will look back in a few years’ time and be amazed that the nonsense I have described was on the statute book in 2012.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough said, one in four of us will experience a mental health condition in our lifetime; three in four of us will see a member of our immediate family experience such a condition. As the right hon. Member for Leigh said, the numbers have increased because, while the physical conditions in which we live and work have improved, our lives are busier and much more stressful. The World Health Organisation estimates that by 2030 more people will be affected by depression than any other health condition. The law as it stands sends out the message that if someone has a mental health condition their contribution to public life is not welcome.

Lord Stevenson’s Bill had four aims: first, to repeal section 141 of the Mental Health Act 1983 under which a Member of Parliament, of the Scottish Parliament, of the Welsh Assembly or of the Northern Ireland Assembly automatically lost their seat if they were detained under the Act for more than six months. There is no equivalent provision to remove an MP if they suffer a physical illness that affects their ability to perform their role and, furthermore, someone who lacks mental capacity, as defined by the Mental Capacity Act 2005, can be detained for up to 12 months and not lose their seat.

Secondly, the Bill would amend the Juries Act 1974 significantly to reduce and better define who is ineligible for jury service. At the moment, the Act says that mentally disordered persons are ineligible. The definition of a mentally disordered person is extremely wide and includes people who manage their mental health condition through a prescription from their GP or counselling from a psychiatrist, thus eliminating all sorts of people who would make excellent jurors. Only 2% of people tick the box, but many more should probably do so. Not only is the law discriminatory but it is ineffective. If someone is on trial, they have a right to be confident that the jury is of sound mind. The Bill would better define who should be ineligible, thus making it much more likely that those people would identify themselves in the process.

Thirdly, the Bill would amend the Companies (Model Articles) Regulations 2008, so that someone no longer ceased to be a director of a public or private company purely because of their mental health. All companies are required by statute to have articles of association, and model articles operate where a company has failed to draw up its own. Many companies incorporate them into their own articles. They include a provision that someone ceases to be a director if a registered medical practitioner who is treating them gives a written opinion to the company stating that they have become physically or mentally incapable of acting as a director and they remain so for more than three months—in other words, the correct test of capacity. However, they go on to include a totally unnecessary additional provision relating solely to mental health.

Finally, the Bill would amend school governance regulations so that people detained under the Mental Health Acts would no longer be disqualified from holding office as school governors. Clearly, while someone is detained they are unable to attend governors’ meetings, but that may be for only a short time, and there is no reason why they should not resume their role.

I am delighted that the Government have dealt with one of those issues—the School Governance (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2012 came into force on 17 March, and rightly set the disqualification test as failure to attend six meetings in a period of six months without consent from the governing body. The Government made a public commitment, when they published their mental health strategy, to change the legislation in relation to Members of Parliament. I hope that they will support the rest of the Bill. In the other place, Lord Wallace of Saltaire said that the Government were considering the detail of what was proposed on jury service, and he hoped that the Bill would be reintroduced in this Session. I hope that it receives all-party support, and I was delighted to hear what the right hon. Member for Leigh had to say.

I want to end with two simple contentions. First, Parliament, schools, companies and the court system benefit from the involvement of people with experience of mental health conditions. Indeed, our debate has been illuminated in particular by the contributions of my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) and by the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones). I do not know the hon. Gentleman very well, but I have always pictured him—and I think he would regard it as a compliment—as a bit of a political bruiser. For someone with that reputation to have the courage to say what he said will change people’s opinion of him, and very positively. The whole House has a high regard for what he has said, but I am sure that when we move on to other debates, normal hostilities will be resumed.

A school may have a pupil with a mental health condition; in a court case, the accused’s state of mind may be a key issue. How much better will that school be if a governor has experience? How much better will that court case be if there is a juror with the necessary experience? The Bill will directly help a relatively small number of people, but it also sends a clear message that discrimination is wrong: people have a right to be judged as individuals, not labelled or stereotyped.

In September, the excellent Time to Change campaign, run by Mind and Rethink Mental Illness, surveyed 2,700 people with mental health conditions. Of those, 80% said that they had experienced discrimination, two thirds were too scared to tell their employer, 62% were too scared to tell their friends and, worst of all, more than a third were too scared to seek professional help. Having a mental health condition is nothing to be ashamed of or to keep a secret. It is high time we dragged the law of this land into the 21st century.