Children’s Mental Health

Marco Longhi Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan) for securing this debate. The subject is close to my heart. While we know that the most valuable time in a human’s development is during childhood, and that by setting the right foundations early in life, we can prevent and reduce issues that may occur as a person grows through to adulthood, we also know that mental health, just like physical health, can change at any point in our lives. We need to be bolder about how we tackle the advent of social media and the massively corrosive impact it has had, not just on young people, but on so many people across the age ranges—it does not discriminate.

Naturally, it is most welcome that this Government are acting on the early years healthy development review by asking all local authorities to publish a “Start for Life” offer for parents, backed up with a £500 million package for families. Staff and professionals in our local authorities, education settings, charities and health and community organisations work tirelessly to help our children and families. I thank them from the bottom of my heart for what they do. Yes, the pandemic has made that challenge all the harder, but they have tried their best in these unprecedented times.

The pandemic has also made things harder for parents and carers of children, whether they are living in homes not suited to the number of people in them all day, every day during lockdown, or struggling to balance working from home with caring responsibilities and home schooling. Families need to know that they are supported, and it needs to be as easy as possible for them to know where to get support for their children.

Parents want what is best for their children, and finding support when needed can often be difficult. Family hubs will provide one central point of contact from conception until the day that the child legally becomes an adult, providing a more holistic approach that combines virtual access with face-to-face support. As amazing as technology is in connecting us, we still face a barrier of digital exclusion in some areas of our communities, and nothing truly replaces the benefits that come with face-to-face support. We need to build more robust and resilient young people, who will grow into robust and resilient adults for the generations to come, and that must start as early as possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Will Quince)]

I start by thanking all Members in all parts of the House for their valuable contributions to this important debate. It is, I hope, one of those debates in which all of us fundamentally want the same thing, and I think we have heard an awful lot of agreement across the House today. In Children’s Mental Health Week, it is important that we raise awareness of this important issue. Like the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan), I congratulate and thank Place2Be for all the work it does to raise awareness nationally. It is right that we have a spotlight on children and young people’s mental health, and I join hon. Members in thanking all those who work in mental health services up and down our country.

As many Members rightly pointed out, the pandemic has proved to be hugely challenging for children and young children, but they have shown incredible resilience in the most difficult circumstances. The pandemic has been difficult for many families. We all know this and many examples have been cited today, but we should not overlook the impact on children from not being able to attend school or go to after-school clubs, from not being able to see friends and family or play the sport they love, and from being stuck at home with their parents, as my children regularly said. There was disruption to their lives, and I thank teachers and support staff throughout the country for helping us to reopen schools and get children where we know it is best for them to be and they wanted to be. Whenever I visit a school, I ask about mental health and mental wellbeing. Immediately before this debate, I was in Trinity Church of England School in London, alongside Instagram and “Love Island” star Dr Alex George, to meet the mental health support team. They are doing incredible work, which I want to see rolled out further and faster; I will cover that in more detail later.

As Minister for Children and Families, I have a cross-Government role, but I hope the House understands that my focus today is on education. I will try to answer as many of the points raised by colleagues on both sides of the House as possible, but first—perhaps unusually for an Opposition day debate—I want to say how much I welcome the Opposition raising this subject and pushing the Government to go further and faster. As Children’s Minister, let me say that one child or young person waiting too long for mental health support is one child too many. The health, both mental and physical, of children and young people is something that I and this Government take incredibly seriously. Are we doing a lot already? Yes. Can we do more? Yes, and we must. Our children and young people deserve nothing less.

[Marco Longhi]

Does the Minister agree that mental health is not something we can consider under one umbrella? In my Dudley constituency, Priory Park boxing club is doing fantastic work with children who are excluded from school. It is a great place not only for their physical wellbeing but for their mental health. The new hubs need to be integrated with other stakeholders in the community.

[Will Quince]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will come on to talk about family hubs and the role that they can rightly play.

I am no expert in this field, but I listen closely to those who are and I split mental health and mental wellbeing into three categories: resilience, identification and intervention, and specialist support. On the first, what can we do to help children and young people to be more resilient? We do that through our relationships, sex and health education, which is now compulsory between five and 16 years old, through our behaviour in schools guidance, through the sports and extracurricular activities that we have in schools throughout our country, and through things like forest schools, which have been mentioned and which are absolutely brilliant.

How can we identify emerging problems sooner and provide that all-important support? We can do that through measures such as mental health lead training and rolling out mental health support teams across the country. For access to specialist mental health support, we have the NHS long-term plan and additional investment of £2.3 billion a year by 2023-24, allowing at least an additional 345,000 children and young people to access NHS-funded mental health support, which of course comes under the Department of Health and Social Care.

Covid-19 Update

Marco Longhi Excerpts

Thursday 13th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Lady talks about ensuring everyone gets access to the booster. The people at the top of the list should be those who are clinically extremely vulnerable, as long as the vaccine is something that can work for them. That is why, during the month of December, especially when we accelerated the booster programme, working mainly with GPs but also with others, those who are housebound or are in care homes were a priority and we saw the booster rate rise substantially.

I also point the hon. Lady to what I said in my statement about the 1.3 million clinically extremely vulnerable. The NHS has contacted them directly to ensure that they have access to the new antivirals that we have procured. I am sure that she would welcome that.

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement, which brings such positive news that will give confidence to individuals and businesses as they return to a more normal life as we learn to live with covid. My constituency has many, perhaps a higher proportion of, small self-employed businesses and they were absolutely terrified in the run-up to Christmas that we were looking at lockdowns and severe restrictions. I therefore thank him and the Prime Minister for the balanced, proportionate approach that the Government have taken in looking at how we move forward and for the steps they took during the Christmas period. May I seek assurances that that will continue to be the way?

Health and Social Care

Marco Longhi Excerpts

Friday 3rd December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

It looks as if I might be going on tour again; the same thing happened when I last did one of these statements. I am happy to go to “Bluecar”—or Redcar, to call it by its proper name—to see my hon. Friend in his constituency, and to make such a visit when it can be arranged.

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

I welcome the Minister’s statement and the gargantuan amounts of money that he, his team and the Government are putting into the NHS. Can he provide me and my Dudley constituents with some assurances that that will translate into additional capacity and bringing down the covid-induced backlogs?

[Edward Argar]

Absolutely, I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. He rightly alludes to the fact that the inputs are important, but for those of us on the Government Benches, it is the results they bring—the outputs—and what we do with the money that matter. We will ensure that that money is well spent, harnesses innovation and delivers even better patient care and access to his constituents and many others.

Oral Answers to Questions

Marco Longhi Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

The Government have a proud record on combating air pollution. The hon. Gentleman is right to raise the ongoing challenges of that, and I know that the Government, including the current Chancellor and the Environment Secretary, take it very seriously.

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

T4. Will the Secretary of State please confirm whether the additional £250 million investment in primary care will be spent on additional capacity to be delivered by NHS doctors, providing a distinct break from the bureaucracy of the last Labour Government and the legacy of Tony Blair?

[Sajid Javid]

First, let me say that our GPs have done a phenomenal job during the pandemic. The nation really cannot thank them enough for what they did during the pandemic and what they continue to do. The GP access programme that I announced last week is about providing extra support for GPs to do what they love doing best, which is seeing their patients. The extra £250 million over the next five months will be ringfenced—it will be protected—and it will be there to expand general practice.

Covid-19: Government’s Publication of Contracts

Marco Longhi Excerpts

Tuesday 9th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con) [V]]

Notwithstanding the answer that the Minister gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer), does he agree with my constituents and I that, during a national emergency, the British people want a Government who focus resources on saving lives over prioritising red tape?

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the point he makes on behalf of his constituents. The overwhelming priority was to ensure that we got the PPE in the quantities we needed to our frontline, and we procured that in an incredibly challenging environment. I pay tribute to all the officials who worked flat out to do that. The Court judgment found that there was no policy of deprioritisation of meeting transparency requirements, but it also found as a matter of fact, which is clear in the judgment, that that bar was not met. That is something we have worked very hard on subsequently and continue to do so, to ensure that transparency requirements are met.

Covid Contracts: Judicial Review

Marco Longhi Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question, but in answer I revert back to what the judge, Mr Justice Chamberlain, said in his findings in this case: he found no evidence of a policy of deprioritisation of meeting transparency requirements on publication.

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con) [V]]

My Dudley North constituents, like me, can see right through this urgent question for its petty political intent. For the avoidance of doubt, will my hon. Friend confirm how many people came to harm because this paperwork was two weeks late, compared with the harm that would have arisen from PPE and medical equipment being received two weeks late?

[Edward Argar]

Transparency is important. The Chair of the Public Accounts Committee and others have rightly made that point, but saving lives is important and, I would argue, in the height of the pandemic, more important. It was right that civil servants and others focused entirely on that purpose of getting the PPE to reduce the risk of loss of life, and as the judge acknowledged, they have worked very hard subsequently to catch up with the transparency requirements to ensure that the information is published and is available for interrogation.

Long Covid

Marco Longhi Excerpts

Thursday 14th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con) [V]]

I wish to concentrate my remarks in this debate on two things, which will hopefully show that even though long covid is not as high in word search functions, the Government and the NHS have not ignored it. My first observation is that, in the context of covid-19 itself still being a relatively new disease, the existence of long covid has been known about for even less time. I must say how impressed I am by the response of the Government and the NHS, which have put in place the comprehensive five-point plan for long covid support and made an investment of £10 million in post-covid assessment services currently spanning 69 trusts—almost half of all NHS hospitals in the UK.

Secondly, I will provide some real-time feedback from Russells Hall Hospital in Dudley North, which is my local hospital. It is one of the appointed assessment centres, and has informed me today that it has assessed more than 500 patients to date. It is working closely with primary and community care colleagues, and has produced a stratified, multi-professional offering for patients about the four main aspects of long covid, based on clinical severity and need. It is ensuring that patients with ongoing respiratory symptoms have access to imaging and respiratory nurse and clinician support, and that patients with other organ dysfunction are seen by the appropriate specialists, as are patients with musculoskeletal problems. Long covid patients can also benefit from our excellent Action Heart service, which is providing state-of-the-art exercise rehabilitation and already offers an excellent service to Dudley people. Patients requiring mental health support have full access to the NHS’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies scheme. Finally, there has been a series of workshops with local GPs and hospitals to better understand this condition and the support services required for ongoing care.

I am also advised that the clinical commissioning group is co-ordinating work in conjunction with all hospitals and CCGs across the Black Country to better understand the wider long-term impact of this condition. No doubt that will feed through NHS England so that we all have a better understanding of this terrible disease and its legacy.

Covid-19

Marco Longhi Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

My constituents are dutifully doing everything they can to halt this deadly disease during the second lockdown. As we commemorate today those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in previous wars, we are fighting a war ourselves against an invisible enemy, so it is a timely reminder that we should also think about all our key workers and constituents, some of whom are making significant sacrifices and some of whom have paid the ultimate sacrifice in fighting this terrible war. We have seen businesses battered, religious services banned and we have criminalised families meeting. We have seen some unprecedented restrictions imposed on our daily lives. I fully appreciate and respect that restrictions are vital in keeping the R rate low to protect our vulnerable constituents and to prevent our NHS from being overwhelmed, but we owe it to everybody to explain with robust and clear scientific evidence why we must intrude into people’s lives when we do so with such significance.

For the avoidance of doubt, I fully back the health team, the Prime Minister’s decisions and the Chancellor’s generosity. However, here comes the dreaded but: with Government relying on scientific advice to inform policy, as someone who is an engineer and who understands the statistical variability of forecasting, I have found it very difficult to accept how Government advisers can display a chart that shows a flat worst-case prediction curve with other curves modelling daily death rates between five and 10 times worse at their peak compared with the one they had originally modelled. I must question how we could reach such wildly different outcomes. Public compliance is key, especially while a vaccine is not yet available, but compliance will also be a function of the consistency and credibility of the information that we use to back up our decisions.

Public Health: Coronavirus Regulations

Marco Longhi Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

I completely support the Government’s efforts to help bring coronavirus under control, to keep us safe and to protect the NHS and our economy. The easy clinical solution would have been a total lockdown, so the new tiered system is a mark of the effort going into providing responses that are tailored to localities.

Everyone understands that social contact poses a risk of contagion, so managing those contacts in pubs, cafes and suchlike is absolutely key. We want to keep those pubs open where we can—not just because of the jobs they provide directly and through the supply chain, but because pubs are often the only place of contact for many isolated people. I think of the Chapel House wet-only community pub in Gornal in my constituency, and James, the landlord, who is still making things work with about half the normal clientele. However, James has told me that if his pub is to retain table-only service, he will have double the staff as well. That is an equation he can balance for the next month or so only by dipping into reserves.

My appeal is for us to revisit the risk profile of table-only service in wet-only pubs, and to consider perhaps more creative suggestions that might be even better. At the moment, new, young staff might be covid- asymptomatic and moving from table to table taking orders, and then coming back serving that table. Can we not look, perhaps, at more creative ideas, such as a table calling system on rotation, so that an individual from each table, wearing a mask, is called to the bar systematically?

All I am asking is that we revisit the science around this specific issue. Whatever the outcome, I feel certain that Dudley people, and people in Gornal, will play their part in defeating this virus.

Coronavirus Act 2020 (Review of Temporary Provisions)

Marco Longhi Excerpts

Wednesday 30th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

We are absolutely open to further and longer debates—for instance, the debate we had on Monday. Under the Standing Orders of the House, this debate is 90 minutes, and neither the Speaker nor we had the choice over that, but we introduced a full day’s debate on Monday, and there will be many more debates to come.

I turn to a measure that we will not be renewing. I have said that we will keep measures in place only for as long as is necessary, and I can tell the House that in one area we will revoke a power that was part of the original Act. When creating the Act, we included provisions to modify mental health legislation to reduce from two to one the number of doctors’ opinions needed to detain someone under the Mental Health Act 1983 and to extend legal time limits on the detention of mental health patients. These were always powers of last resort, and I was not persuaded, even in the peak, that they were necessary, because our mental health services have shown incredible resilience and ingenuity. I have therefore decided that these powers are no longer required in England and will not remain part of the Act. We will shortly bring forward the necessary secondary legislation to sunset these provisions.

The third part of the Act contains measures to suppress the virus. As a nation, we have succeeded in suppressing the virus once, thanks to so many sacrifices by so many people, but with cases on the rise, we know that more needs to be done, and we need to do it together. Our central strategy of suppressing the virus while protecting the economy, education and the NHS until a vaccine arrives is underpinned by this part of the Act. It gives us stronger powers to restrict or prohibit events and public gatherings, and where necessary to shut down premises. It gives police and immigration officers the power to isolate a person who is or may be infectious, and it allows us to close educational settings or childcare providers. Again, these are not measures that anyone wants to use, but we must keep them in place for the moment, because we need every weapon in our arsenal to fight this virus, and these are a proportionate response.

[Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)]

As the virus clearly behaves according to how each and every one of us behaves, will the Secretary of State join me in condemning what we saw on the news this morning at Coventry University, where some students were behaving in a shameful way, up close and personal, partying?

[Matt Hancock]

rose—