Mental Health

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the thoughtful contribution of the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley). I am very glad to be in the Chamber to speak alongside those who have made exceptional speeches today, including my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) to name just two.

I will highlight three things. The first is the key factors that are linked to mental well-being and the characteristics of my local borough of Newham. The second is what resources are available to my local health authorities and mental health services. The third is the need for those resources to be improved in the light of what we know works in improving mental health.

The need for a robust strategy to promote well-being is illustrated by the correlation between the determinants of mental ill health and some of the characteristics of the population of my borough. As my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane), who is no longer in his place, attested so powerfully, one such determinant is age. The rates of mental illness vary across age ranges, but it is a sad fact that younger people are more likely than the elderly to experience mental ill health. A high proportion of mental health problems develop between the ages of 14 and 20. One in 10 children between the ages of five and 16 have a mental health problem, and such problems may well continue into adulthood.

The borough of Newham has one of the youngest populations in the country. The number of young people with mental health problems is therefore greater than elsewhere. Some 40% of the borough’s population is made up of people under the age of 25. As nearly 10% of people aged between five and 16 experience mental health problems, statistically we can expect 4,262 of the children and young people in Newham to experience such problems. That clearly has an impact on the needs of the population of Newham and on the type of service that it requires. It should be funded to cater for those needs.

We all know that there are other important determinants of the mental health of a community. One of those is deprivation. Common mental disorders such as depression, anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder are more prevalent in deprived households. Again, Newham suffers from high levels of deprivation. It is ranked the third most deprived local authority in the country and 51.5% of its children live in poverty. The index of deprivation ranks the borough fourth in the country for the proportion of children aged between nought and 15 living in an income-deprived household. That is just one measure of deprivation, but I am sure hon. Members will agree that it is a worrying one.

In addition, the decline of owner-occupation and the increase in the private rented sector changes the very nature of local communities. Support networks that people rely on—their friends and family, and wider communities such as their Church and faith—are disintegrating as housing pressures force families to move home, leave their communities or remain in overcrowded, sometimes unhygienic and often poorly managed private rented housing, which is sadly a fast-growing sector of tenure in the London borough of Newham.

In my constituency, there is a high level of need for services that will enable the people of Newham to be self-sufficient and lead independent, successful lives. My concern is that the process used to allocate the resources needed to support those services is fundamentally flawed. It is skewed in a way that significantly disadvantages my community.

Since 2006, if not earlier, the population estimate for Newham has clearly been an underestimate by the Office for National Statistics. The under-count was estimated at about 60,000 people until, in November 2011, the ONS went some way towards recognising the historic underestimate by provisionally estimating the population at 272,000, an increase of 32,000. That significant increase of 13% is, by the way, the largest change in any London borough. However, the new figure still falls some 30,000 short of the population estimate made by an independently commissioned study. That is a shortfall in excess of 10%.

The real population of the borough stands at roughly 300,000. That is the figure that should drive resource allocation, because it relates to the real world and real need. However, the ONS mid-year estimates are used to determine how the national funding pot is allocated to local areas, even though they do not accurately reflect the true population of my area. Given the level of need in my constituency, to say that resources are not allocated on a level playing field is an understatement.

The effect of an inadequate allocation system is compounded by a reliance on historical spend to determine current needs. That means that my local primary care trust has consistently struggled to find resources to deal with persistent need. Figures in the House Library tell me that expenditure per head on mental health in Newham in 2010-11 was £208.93. That compares with £447.21 in Westminster and £331.81 in Kensington and Chelsea. I wish to hammer home the point that the spend for Newham is based on the ONS population estimate, so the real spend per head is even lower.

The shadow health and wellbeing board for the London borough of Newham has discussed the matter at length and agreed a robust strategy, with a clear focus on maintaining resilience within the community. It wants to support people by ensuring that they possess the skills and resources that will enable them to negotiate successfully the challenges that they experience.

Let us face it: we know from evidence what works. The health and wellbeing board has indicated that it wants to focus its activity on parenting skills and pre-school education to set up an early family environment that supports children’s emotional and behavioural development. It wants to support lifelong learning, with health promotion in schools and continuing education, as schools are a really important resource, particularly for children facing difficulties at home.

The board also wants to find a way of improving working lives in the borough, as one in six people in the work force are affected by mental health problems, and a way of supporting a good and healthy lifestyle by encouraging exercise and good diet. It wants to encourage the learning of new skills and the taking-up of creative pursuits—social participation that promotes mental well-being across the piece. The board is also supporting communities through environmental improvements. Environmental predictors of poor mental health include neighbourhood noise, overcrowding, fear of crime, poor housing and so on. Finding out what to do is frustrating, but it is also frustrating that resources are being rather unfairly allocated. Newham is poorly served in that regard.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for creating this opportunity to discuss an issue that is often invisible, and on which there is not enough focus and debate. Poor mental health has an extraordinarily detrimental impact on huge numbers of people in our communities. We could and should be dealing with the problem in a plethora of holistic ways in our local communities.

Newham is severely under-resourced in the face of significant pressures on mental health provision. I am glad to see the Minister of State, Department of Health, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), in the Chamber. I know he has listened to me and, given that he is a former Whip, that he is a very honourable man. I shall write to him to push the case for greater funding for Newham as we continue to fight for the resources that my communities desperately need to access better life chances, which includes better mental health.