NHS: Mental Health Services

Lord Wills Excerpts

Monday 8th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wills]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, on securing this debate on this most important subject. It is a tribute to his work, and to my noble friend Lord Layard and other speakers in this debate, that nowadays this Government accept without question, as did the previous Government, that there is no health without mental health. That is huge progress from the situation just a few years ago.

However, as the noble Lord suggested, there is no reason for complacency. There are formidable challenges ahead. Others noble Lords with far greater experience in this sphere than I have will no doubt speak about those challenges in the rest of this debate. In my few remarks I want to focus on the role of the voluntary sector in delivering mental health services and, in particular, something that might be able to be done to support it.

The voluntary sector has become more and more important in delivering mental health services. We heard a few examples from the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, of its invaluable work in delivering mental health services and in providing care and support to well over 500,000 people who use mental health services every day across England in a wide variety of community and hospital settings.

The voluntary sector is by nature more heterogeneous than statutory health and social care organisations. It is that very variety that has helped generate much of the innovation that service users value in the delivery of mental health services. But it also makes more demanding the task of supporting it through all the challenges that it faces. I should be grateful for any detail that the Minister can give about how the Government intend to support voluntary sector organisations in the months ahead, with all the difficult challenges of funding that we all recognise. Earlier this year, in a statement of the Government’s intent, a recently departed Health Minister said:

“It is crucial that we continue to champion our voluntary organisations, because their expertise allows them to design and develop innovative solutions to the big challenges we face in health, public health and social care”.

It would be interesting to hear how the Minister intends to continue that theme and support voluntary sector organisations in the months and years ahead.

Among all those challenges that the voluntary sector faces, including the fundamental one of adequate and sustainable funding, it needs to negotiate its way through a thicket of complex statutory provision.

There have been two major mental health Acts in the past 10 years and more than 100 pieces of legislation that might be relevant to those delivering mental health services. That is daunting to work through for anyone, but especially for those operating in the voluntary sector, who often do not have any significant back-up or support at all. That is why it is very welcome that the Mental Health Providers Forum is about to publish a resource that brings together in one place the most commonly used legislation in mental health to show how it relates to policy and practice, as well as to the experience of all those who use mental health services. The Department of Health should be congratulated on its role in funding the development of this resource, which will help practitioners, managers and trustees to combine legally sound decision-making with safe and effective practice. I hope that the Minister can assure me that he and his department will do all they can to bring this resource to the attention of all those concerned.