Mental Health: Out-of-Area Placements

Debate between Norman Lamb and Mark Williams

Thursday 3rd December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Norman Lamb (North Norfolk) (LD)]

It is a great pleasure to be able to raise a very important issue for debate, albeit three hours earlier than expected. It is good to see the Minister for Community and Social Care taking his seat.

I want to raise an issue of profound importance. It is a practice which I think is intolerable but which carries on every week of the year and probably every day of the year: the shunting of people around the country, sometimes a long distance away from home, at a moment of mental health crisis. Typically, someone at a moment of acute crisis would be taken into hospital but there would be no bed available for them, so they would be taken away somewhere else in the country. There are numerous stories of people being taken hundreds of miles away from home on a regular basis.

Such practice would never be tolerated in physical health services. Let us imagine, for example, someone who had had a stroke or with a heart condition being taken by ambulance and being told, “I’m sorry, there’s no room at the local hospital. We’re taking you to Cumbria from Norfolk.” It would be an outrage. It would be regarded as a scandal, so it does not happen—yet it happens every week of the year in mental health. I regard that as discrimination at the heart of our NHS and it is one of the very many examples of how people who suffer from acute mental ill health are disadvantaged by the system.

Incidentally, I make no criticism of any individual Government; this practice always happened, but there has been a rise in the number of instances, which I will come to in a little while. In many ways, someone suffering from mental ill health does not get the same right of access to treatment at a moment of need as someone with a physical health problem. If any of us in the Chamber stopped and thought about it for a moment, we would conclude that we cannot begin to justify that, and that there must be a programme designed to achieve genuine equality of access to support at that moment of need.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this debate about an area in which he has done so much work to date. The debate is about out-of-area mental health placements, but does he agree that there is also a huge problem in some of the vast health board areas—in our case in Wales—where rurality is an important factor? For instance, the closure of the Afallon mental health ward in Bronglais hospital in Aberystwyth means that constituents of mine have to travel or be sent 50 miles away—not over the easiest terrain—to the Morlais ward in Carmarthen. There is a huge problem across the country, but there is a great problem in those great geographic areas too. I do not expect my right hon. Friend to comment on the details of the Welsh national health service, but I am sure the problem is replicated in English health areas.

[Norman Lamb]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that. He makes an extremely important point. I will come on to address it in more detail later.

There is, for example, evidence of an increased risk of suicide if people are treated a long way from home and family and friends who struggle to visit them. The idea of care close to home is incredibly important in mental health. We should, as far as possible, seek to care for people at home, not take them into hospital unless that is unavoidable. There are times when that is necessary, and as far as possible there should be a place close to home.

[Mr Williams]

I know that what I am about to ask is not a central point of my right hon. Friend’s debate, but does he agree that one of the unacceptable outcomes has been the increased use of the police and police cells for holding people overnight? That has been the situation in my constituency.

[Norman Lamb]

That is a shocking practice. I applaud my hon. Friend for the work that he has done on it in his area. The idea of putting someone who is suffering an acute mental illness into a police cell, which is defined in the legislation, unbelievably, as “a place of safety”, is bizarre and ought not to be tolerated. I am pleased that the Government have indicated an intention to legislate, in effect to eradicate the problem completely for under-18s and to make it an exception for adults. We managed to reduce the numbers in England by 50% in the past two years, which was considerable progress, but we need to go much further and bring an end to an unacceptable practice.

It is interesting that where local passion and drive exist, amazing things are possible. In our capital city, London, last year around 20 people in total ended up in a police cell, whereas in Sussex the number was over 400. That demonstrates that with real drive from both police and mental health services, practices can be changed and people’s lives can be made better. My hon. Friend is right to persist with the issue in Wales, just as I have tried to do in England.

--- Later in debate ---

[Norman Lamb]

Absolutely. My right hon. Friend is talking about something called street triage—I am sure that the Minister is familiar with it—which we introduced in many areas of the country over the past two to three years with a bit of pump-priming grant. Some pioneering areas, such as Leicestershire, just went ahead and introduced it before the national pilots started. The evidence is dramatic. Where we have that collaboration between the police and mental health services, with a nurse embedded in the police team, we achieve amazing results. We completely reduce the number of people being taken in under that legislation, because the nurse can find alternative solutions or provide care at home. Where it is necessary to take somebody to a place of safety, the numbers having to go into police cells falls dramatically. That innovative work was very much part of the crisis care concordat that I pioneered when a Minister, the aim of which was for the first time ever to set standards in mental health crisis care.

[Mr Mark Williams]

It would be wrong not to acknowledge in my area the Dyfed-Powys police and how the health board has embarked on such an initiative. My right hon. Friend will acknowledge that areas such as mine face the challenge of rurality and making those services available where they are needed. There is still a fear that all too often the need is not met.

[Norman Lamb]

I agree. My own county of Norfolk, with its widely dispersed rural communities, suffers from the same challenges. Sometimes having a nurse in a car with a couple of police officers does not work in a big rural area. However, we can do other things, like having a nurse embedded in the police operations room so that whenever an issue arises they can speak immediately by telephone or, if necessary, get a resource to the scene. Depending on the geography, there are ways of dealing with those challenges. We need to be much smarter in doing that. I applaud the innovation across the country.

Our whole approach in the crisis care concordat was rather different from the traditional Government approach, which is sort of to impose a straitjacket. The crisis care concordat said, “These are the principles. You come up with your plan for implementing them, working with the police, mental health services and the local authority, in a way that works for your locality.” That generated the most amazing degree of innovation across the country, and real progress has been made. Although I initiated it, I have enormous admiration for the people on the ground who got on and did it. It was inspiring.