NHS: Long-term Sustainability

Lord Davies of Brixton Excerpts

Thursday 18th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure and an honour to have been able to listen to this debate. I am happy to come in at this late stage with some additional thoughts. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Patel, for initiating the debate, and all the other speakers. In particular, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Ramsey of Wall Heath.

Putting your name down to speak in this sort of debate means getting a large number of briefing notes. I cannot claim to have read them all. Perhaps the Minister should commit himself to reading all the briefing notes and acknowledge the contribution they have made to our debate. A consolidated version of the notes would be a useful document.

Given the volume of material, there was obviously bound to be much that was missed from our discussions. I will focus my remarks on good mental health. I urge noble Lords to read the briefing notes from both the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Mental Health Foundation. In the time available, I can touch on only some of the points arising from their submissions, but I think they are important and should be read.

I want to make three points. First, there is a considerable cost of poor mental health. I emphasise that measures are available that can tackle those problems. Providing healthcare is not just about the financial return, but when we can spend relatively limited amounts and get huge benefit, we clearly need to take that into account. Secondly, the focus in this area has to be on prevention. The value of measures aimed at prevention is considerable and will be effective across the whole health service. Thirdly, I mention the importance of undertaking more research in the area of mental health.

I take the opportunity to stress again the importance of getting a mental health Act through the House. Presumably, we will now wait for the next Session. An incoming Labour Government, if we have one, are committed to doing that. The problem is that the problems assessed by Sir Simon Wessely six years ago are still there. The Act is a symbol of the intention to deal with the problems he identified.

What measures could we adopt? What measures do we need to think through? They are all set out in the submissions and there is not enough time to go through them all. Poor mental health among the workforce has been touched on already. According to the research we have been provided with, that is where £1 of expenditure provides £13.62 in improvements. This bears directly on the overall health of our economy. Individual health is very much the health of the economy as a whole. The £118 billion that poor mental health is costing us—that is 5% of GDP—is an obvious and clear target for work across the important area of poor mental health.