Mental Health (Approval Functions) Bill

Lord Watts Excerpts

Tuesday 30th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

We need to look carefully at those trends. I remember the moment when my thinking about mental health changed. It came when I was Secretary of State for Health and I received the Bradley report on mental ill health in the criminal justice system. I recall the moment when I read the statistic that seven out of 10 young people in the system have some form of undiagnosed or untreated mental health problem. My jaw dropped and at that moment I realised that we were seriously failing many thousands of people by failing to give them the support they needed when they needed it, and so they went into detention and down a path of failing to fulfil their potential. That is a terrible indictment of our life today. In addition, the level of prescribing of anti-depressants has almost doubled over the past decade. We are issuing almost 40 million prescriptions for anti-depressants, which suggests to me that insufficient alternatives to medication are available in our communities and people are being given very old-fashioned, outdated interventions by the authorities which are not meeting their needs. That is why we cannot allow this complacency any more and why we need a modern approach to good mental health care.

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right when he says that mental health has been the poor relation of the health service, but does he agree that, within that mental health service, children’s mental health services have often been the poor relation again? Does he hope that the Government will address specific services for children who need mental health services?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. As important as the debate is, the wider considerations of mental health and its treatment are not actually the subject for today—that is the Bill before us. So in rising to answer his hon. Friend’s problem, I am sure that the shadow Secretary of State will come back to the specifics of the Bill.