Mental Health

Debate between Nic Dakin and Luciana Berger

Wednesday 9th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Luciana Berger]

I do not think it is an either/or situation; it is about how we do both, and I will come on to that in the rest of my remarks.

We know that 75% of people who have mental health problems in working life first experienced symptoms in childhood or adolescence, yet only about 6% of the mental health budget is spent on child and adolescent mental health services. We need to do more to focus attention on children, young people and, crucially, prevention, and here we must look to our places of learning, our workplaces and our communities. We need schools and colleges that promote good mental health. We need to ensure that all children have access to high-quality social and emotional learning so that they acquire the skills to express how they feel and develop an understanding and awareness of good mental health. We were concerned to read the 2013 Ofsted report on personal, social, health and economic education, which stated that mental health education was often omitted from the curriculum owing to a lack of teacher training. The Government have funded the PSHE Association to publish guidance and lesson plans to support teaching about mental health, but how are the Government ensuring that schools are actually using it?

We need communities that promote good health and wellbeing. Poor housing, fuel poverty and neighbourhood factors, such as overcrowding, feeling unsafe and a lack of access to community facilities, can have a harmful impact on mental health. These, along with abuse, bullying, trauma, deprivation and isolation, are just some of the levers of mental distress in our communities that we must address.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on setting out such a strong case. Does she agree that the pressure on local government over the last few years has had a negative impact on community cohesion in relation to mental health and led to a growth in loneliness and other such things that spawn mental health problems?

[Luciana Berger]

My hon. Friend’s intervention brings me neatly on to my next remarks. I am enormously concerned about the impact of the Government’s deep cuts to local authority budgets over the past five years, of the additional £200 million in-year cuts to public health and of the cuts coming further down the line. I am concerned about their impact on our communities and the services that serve them, such as our libraries, drop-in centres, leisure centres, befriending services—my hon. Friend talked about loneliness—children’s centres, which support parents and young children, and citizens advice bureaux, which support people early on. They are the glue that support and keep our communities together, and I am concerned about what might happen over the next few years.

We need a social care system that is integrated with our physical and mental health services, and we will continue to push the Government to address the fragmentation across these systems. Billions have been slashed from social care budgets and the number of people receiving social care support for mental health has fallen by a quarter since 2009-10. This is seriously impacting on mental health trusts’ ability to discharge their patients. I hear that time and again when I visit mental health trusts across the country. They have patients they cannot move out because the social care is not available for them to move into.

We need workplaces that promote a good work-life balance and where mental health is recognised, understood and supported. Some 70 million working days are lost every year owing to stress, depression and other mental health conditions. Mental health problems cost employers in the UK £30 billion a year through lost production, recruitment and absence. As the chief executive of NHS England has rightly pointed out, the NHS has to get its own House in order. Across the health service, staff tell me they are concerned about their wellbeing and that of their colleagues. Longer hours, fewer resources, greater demands and an incredible amount of goodwill are creating a perfect storm within the NHS. The figures from the NHS staff survey show that the proportion of staff reporting work-related stress has increased from 29% in 2010 to 38% in 2014.

Higher Education

Debate between Nic Dakin and Luciana Berger

Wednesday 3rd November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Luciana Berger]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention; she raises some valuable points about the fantastic work that Aimhigher has done not only with young people in further education, but in schools, and I will go on to mention some of the wide range of activities that it is involved in. Most specifically, Aimhigher helps young people from families with no other members who went to university to consider higher education. For many of them just going on to further education is a massive step.

I want to expand on the list of Aimhigher’s activities, because it does so many things. It has made more than 1 million interventions to encourage young people to think about university—an incredible amount of activity. That extends to more than 2,500 schools in the UK, and 300 colleges. We have heard about its summer school, which gives young people a three to five-day taster experience of what it means to go to university. It offers one-day master classes, given by university staff, in all subject areas. It also offers continuing professional development for teachers in school and staff in further education colleges, to make them aware of changes in higher education and the opportunities that are available.

Aimhigher offers impartial workshops on university life, finance, choice and how to make an application—because for many young people filling in the UCAS form is a massive step forward. It also offers bespoke programmes for those with disabilities, and for people who were looked-after children. In Liverpool we try to do a lot of work to help looked-after children to take that step, because so many do not go to university. Aimhigher also offers additional support for vocational learners—especially apprentices, as there is no reason why they should not go on to university if they want to.

I was therefore incredibly alarmed to learn from the Universities Minister a few hours ago, when I asked him about the Aimhigher programme, that responsibility for the activities that it currently pursues will fall to universities. I am incredibly concerned about that, because there is not enough detail, and a massive vacuum will be created during the transition. There will be a £150 million national scholarship fund. I welcome that, but it is only a fraction of the investment that the Labour Government made in the widening of participation—and it assists only the brightest, as we can see from today’s statement, to the exclusion of those who may still be good enough to apply to university, but who will not qualify for a scholarship.

My hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) quoted something that the Deputy Prime Minister said the week before the election, and I want to return to that, because the next line is very pertinent to the debate. He said:

“If fees rise to £7,000 a year, as many rumours suggest they would, within five years some students will be leaving university up to £44,000 in debt. That would be a disaster.”

Then he added:

“If we have learnt one thing from the economic crisis, it is that you can’t build a future on debt.”

[Nic Dakin]

Does my hon. Friend think it is ironic that the Deputy Prime Minister, who was so correct when he said that, should now use the excuse of the debt caused by the bankers to transfer the problems of and payments for that debt to the young people of today and tomorrow? It seems completely wrong.