Mental Health

Debate between Luciana Berger and Paul Blomfield

Wednesday 9th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Luciana Berger]

I will come on to the very serious issue of perinatal mental health that the right hon. Gentleman raises. Again, we should all be very concerned about that issue.

I am very concerned that there has been a psychiatry recruitment crisis, with a 94% increase in vacant and unfilled consultant posts. The NHS constitution treats mental health and physical health differently. The Government claim to be increasing mental health budgets, but patients and professionals tell a different story. Ever since Ministers discontinued the annual survey of investment in mental health three years ago, we do not have an accurate picture of spending on mental health in our country.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an important point about the transparency of spending. Last June, I asked the then Health Minister, the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who is in his place, when figures would be published, and he told me that the Government were working with NHS England to provide meaningful data. Last month, the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) tabled a question for written answer asking when the information would be available. It is still not available. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government should come clean?

[Luciana Berger]

I thank my hon. Friend for his very important intervention. One of the key points of my speech is that there is so much we should do to shine a spotlight on what is happening to mental health funding right across the country.

Higher Education

Debate between Luciana Berger and Paul Blomfield

Wednesday 3rd November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Paul Blomfield]

I understand the messages that the Government have been sending about the available options, and the way the universities are being forced to accept a way forward that is deeply unpalatable for many of them. Steve Smith went on to point out in the article I quoted that the spending review set the context within which to understand Browne. That is a crucial point. The previous Labour Government set up the Browne review as an independent review of our higher education system, but clearly the steer that was given to Browne on the resources that would be available, and the way they would be allocated, shaped the recommendations and took away any pretence that the final report was the independent review we had sought.

[Luciana Berger]

Is my hon. Friend aware that in 2007 we, as a country, spent only 0.67% of GDP on higher education when the OECD was recommending 1%, and that that figure is now likely to fall as a result of the announcements made today?

[Paul Blomfield]

That is a very important point on our position in relation to competitors in the OECD. We have made enormous progress in the funding of higher education over the past 13 years. We did not get to where we needed to be, but we were moving in the right direction. This Government are reversing that direction and taking us backward.

Let me return to the point about the negative message being sent out about arts, humanities and social science courses, and share with Members the views of the vice-chancellor of the university of Sheffield, Professor Keith Burnett. He is an outstanding leader of an outstanding university, and a scientist. He said:

“In the last few days I have been thinking about how I would feel if my subject – Physics – had been identified as fundamentally unimportant to the UK, or at least unworthy of its investment, in the way that many of our colleagues’ subjects have been. I would be gutted….When I see what richness the work of our colleagues…has brought us…Sir Ian Kershaw’s books on Hitler…shed a unique light on how fascism emerged…offered insights and judgement which can’t be ignored. Mike Braddick’s new book on the Civil War…helps us understand how we came to be who we are as a nation…Focusing on a period when fundamental questions were being debated…casts new light on the transition of Britain’s passage from one era to another…One of our most powerful resources as a country, and as a University, is our cultural insight, our deep questioning of our own society and ideas – perhaps we have never needed that analysis more as we consider how best to go forward. In a world of global competition and profound change, we want our children to have more than just bread to live on.”

I turn now to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) made on education maintenance allowances. Fundamentally—the Minister himself acknowledged this—participation in higher education is in many senses determined by people’s experience of the education system in their early years. We know that for many people who aspire to go to university the critical decision is at the age of 16, and that in low-income families with no history of post-16 education there is huge pressure not to be a further drain on the family’s financial resources. I have talked to constituents across Sheffield, and have been left in no doubt that education maintenance allowances have transformed life chances. Last year, almost 7,000 EMAs were awarded across the city. In the comprehensive spending review, the Chancellor talked about replacing

“education maintenance allowances with more targeted support.”—[Official Report, 20 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 964.]

I suggest that that is a deeply cynical use of language. What could be more targeted than allowances that are assessed according to family income, with the level of payments being determined according to need? The Minister cuts a rather lonely figure today, and I regret that there are not more Members of other parties interested in the debate. I hope that the Minister will address my remarks in his contribution.