Young People’s Mental Health

Debate between Lyn Brown and Mike Wood

Thursday 27th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown]

Absolutely. I totally agree with my hon. Friend, and as I go through my speech I am hoping to provide an example to show how intervention is particularly important for a very young child because of the impact on the rest of the family. Early intervention can do a lot to mitigate other events and difficulties occurring in the family that might include other family members, too.

Unfortunately, tragically and outrageously, young people’s mental health services often receive less attention than adult mental health services, so that young people’s mental health services have been called the “Cinderella of Cinderella services”. In November 2014, the Health Committee found that there were

“serious and deeply ingrained problems with the commissioning and provision of services for young people’s mental health.”

Many providers reported increased waiting times and increased referral thresholds for specialist services, where patients would have to show severer symptoms to receive treatment than they would have done in the past. GPs reported feeling ill-equipped and lacking in confidence when dealing with young people’s mental health issues. The Select Committee found that early intervention programmes were

“suffering from insecure or short term funding, or being cut altogether.”

There really is no excuse for this failing. Around half of people with lifetime mental health problems experience symptoms by the age of 14, and about 75% of them before the age of 18. Catching these problems early could well lessen the severity of adult problems, possibly saving the NHS money in the long term. More importantly, I would suggest, it would reduce unnecessary suffering and enable people to live better lives.

I want to be fair to the Government, who have recognised that there is a problem. In 2014 they set up a children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing taskforce, which made a number of recommendations in its 2015 “Future in mind” report. The taskforce identified a number of problems with young people’s mental health services. The right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who was then the responsible Minister, said that there needed to be a fundamental shift in culture, with a much greater focus on prevention and early intervention.

The taskforce rightly recognised that one of the challenges facing young people’s mental health services was—unsurprisingly—funding. I was pleased when the Government responded by announcing the provision of an additional £1.4 billion of transitional funding for youth mental health services, but that additional money needs to be considered in the context of the less encouraging overall picture of mental health services funding. NHS England’s planning guidance states that all clinical commissioning groups must increase their spending on mental health services by at least as much as their overall budget increases. However, there have been warnings from organisations including mental health trusts that mental health funding is not properly ring-fenced, and that NHS England’s target is being missed.

Let me again follow in the footsteps of my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood. We know from the responses to a series of freedom of information requests from my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) that more than 50% of CCGs intend to spend a smaller proportion of their budgets on mental health in 2016-17. That clearly demonstrates that what the Government tried to do has failed, and that that target is being missed as well.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making some important points. She referred to the taskforce’s “Future in mind” report. According to one of its startling statistics, only between 25% and 35% of young people with diagnosable mental health conditions access support. Does that not underline the need for much better training and much more awareness among both teachers and GPs, in respect of early identification as well as early intervention?

[Lyn Brown]

We need early identification and we need early intervention, but we also need the funds to ensure that there are services to which people can be referred. That is the rub of this whole debate. There does not seem to be the necessary funding at any point in the journey of young people who need help, whether in the form of awareness, intervention or services.

I have been looking into the good work done in my borough, the London borough of Newham. Even in these difficult times, it is increasing its mental health spending in both absolute and relative terms, and its children’s mental health services received an “outstanding” rating from the Care Quality Commission. I wanted to find out how we could improve young people’s mental health provision, and to learn about the challenges that an “outstanding” local provider continued to face in its fight for better services. Professionals in Newham recognise that a good young people’s mental health service does not just help those who have already developed severe and serious conditions, but provides early intervention and preventive programmes so that problems can be dealt with at source.

Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Lyn Brown and Mike Wood

Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown]

In London, as the hon. Gentleman knows, the people of Newham elect a GLA councillor and the GLA councillors then determine which parts of the work they will undertake for the GLA. I do not see that that is a problem. The same thing happens in Newham. When we elect 60 Labour councillors—and zero councillors from any other party—we then give them jobs looking after social services, education, recreation and so on. I can tell the hon. Gentleman the name of the councillor who has the fire remit in my council. He is Councillor Bryan Collier and he is a wonderful bloke. He has been doing the job for decades and he has lots of knowledge.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

Speaking as someone who was a councillor until this time last month, I bow to no one in my appreciation of the importance of local government. However, the shadow Minister demonstrates a strange understanding of democracy given that she seems to prefer the patronage of local council group leaders to the direct mandate involved in being elected on to a body by voters.

Riot Compensation Bill

Debate between Lyn Brown and Mike Wood

Friday 5th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mike Wood]

The right hon. Gentleman makes the point that I was about to move on to. Although the initial three to five-year period provides an important chance to reflect on the early years and to consider whether all the commas are in the right place and all the details are right, it is important that regular reviews take place after that period. I hope the regulations will allow for such reviews. If there is a repeat of anything like what happened in August 2011, it is inconceivable that there would not be a review. That should be a given. Outside of the times of serious riots—which, of course, we hope will last many years or even decades—it is important to have some sort of periodic review, but I do not believe that there is a particular case for this Bill to carry a specific provision for post-legislative scrutiny. As I have said, such a provision could be triggered by a fairly small and limited disturbance, but we must make sure that it does not take another 130 years before we next review whether the legislation is working.

[Lyn Brown]

I completely get where the hon. Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) is coming from—frankly, if I were the Minister in charge of his Bill, I would encourage him to say exactly what he has just said—but I am worried about where we are going with this. It has taken us 150 years to revisit the issue and there have been a number of disturbances—nay, riots—in this country during that time, and even when there have been really big riots, the system of dealing with victims has been wholly inadequate. I am concerned that we will find ourselves in 150 years’ time—well, we won’t, because we’ll be dead by then—saying, “Oh, yeah, we didn’t have very effective legislation. We had things for those old-fashioned things called cars, but the hover vehicles we’re driving around in now aren’t covered by this Riot Act.”

I say gently to the hon. Gentleman that even minor disturbances can wreck lives. We must make sure that any future Government have not only warm words to say to victims of riots, but effective legislation on the books so that they can help those victims effectively. I gently say to the Minister, who I have got a lot of time for—he has done an excellent job so far this morning—that we need to be more warm in our consideration of this Bill, so that we can ensure that the people who come after us in 150 years do not say the same kinds of things that we have been saying, with a little frustration, over the past few weeks.