Oral Answers to Questions

Maria Miller Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman talks about a crisis. I suggest he listen to the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), a former Labour Health Minister, who said that, with Labour,

“It’s always about ‘crisis...the NHS is on its knees’… We’ve got to be a bit more grown up about this.”

And he talks to me about restoring the cuts in corporation tax. The Labour party has already spent that money eight times. The last thing the NHS needs is a cheque from Labour that bounces. The only way that we can ensure that we have funding for the national health service is with a strong economy. Yesterday, the right hon. Gentleman proved that he is not only incompetent, but that he would destroy our economy, and that would devastate our national health service.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

Q4. Cyber-bullying, sexting and revenge pornography are part of British teenage life today; so is a rapid increase in mental health problems among our teenagers. How is the Prime Minister helping to tackle the pressures that teenagers face in Britain today?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend raises an important point. One of the things I spoke about, when I spoke about mental health on Monday, was trying to ensure that we can provide some better training for staff and teachers in schools to identify the early stages of mental health problems for young people, so that those problems can be addressed. Something like half of all mental health problems start before the age of 14, so this is a real issue that we need to address. We are going to look at how we can provide that training. We will also review the mental health services provided for young people to ensure that we can identify what is working and make sure that good practice is spread across the country.