Mental Health: Spending

Lord Patel of Bradford Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jolly]

My noble friend has much experience and expertise in this matter. He will know that NICE has recommended in its guidelines a whole range of psychological therapeutic interventions. Available therapies include interpersonal therapy, brief dynamic interpersonal therapy, couple therapy for depression, counselling for depression and behavioural family therapy, as well as cognitive behavioural family interventions. These therapies are all delivered by IAPT services and are included in IAPT training. Since 2010, more than 1,000 therapists have been trained or are currently in training. With regard to new therapies, I assure my noble friend that the IAPT programme will consider evidence-based therapies recommended by NICE for anxiety and depression as they arise.

[Lord Patel of Bradford (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the first step in developing and delivering effective mental healthcare services is the collection, analysis and dissemination of high-quality data that managers, practitioners and service users can understand, and that, without these, service development will be severely hampered? A case in point is the Count Me In census, which for five years collected high-quality, focused and detailed information on services for minority ethnic mental health patients. The Government did what they are doing again now—that is, incorporating that data collection system into a wider system. An invaluable tool has effectively been lost and that has severely hampered service development in this area. Can the Minister assure me that this data collection system will be brought back into this area of work?

[Baroness Jolly]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Patel of Bradford, is another expert in this field. It is important to keep information about types of mental health conditions and about the ages involved. Currently, data on age are not collected; there is only information on what category people fall into. There is some merit in looking at ethnic background. I have no briefing on that but it may be sensible if I talk to my honourable friend Norman Lamb and ask whether he can have a conversation with the noble Lord about that.