Mental Health

Oliver Colvile Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) and for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) on securing this Backbench Business debate in the first place. Indeed, this is an historic moment, for the simple reason that it must be the first time that three former association officers of the Battersea Conservative association have found themselves speaking in the same debate.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

It won’t happen again.

[Oliver Colvile]

I am sure my hon. Friend is quite right.

I have followed this issue very closely, because in my maiden speech I gave a pledge that I would try to raise the issue of mental health for our veterans during the course of my time in the House of Commons, however short or long that might end up being. I hope very much that I have been good to my word. Only too often when we have had debates on mental health or veterans issues in the House, we have found that it has been the Armed Forces Minister answering, and although he has always done a brilliantly good job of explaining what is going on, the debate has unfortunately never had a joined-up feel about it—for instance, by including Ministers from the Department of Health. That is why I very much welcome this debate.

I congratulate both the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne on their sheer candour in speaking about this issue. If we could capture my hon. Friend’s energy, we would sort out the national grid once and for all.

I recently had a Falklands veteran come to talk to me about how he feels he is being discriminated against in his benefits. That is something we most certainly need to look at as a House. My interest in this whole matter began in 2000, shortly after I was selected as the candidate in Plymouth, Sutton, when I went out with the people from one of the churches and saw them handing out soup and sandwiches to various people. Plymouth, being a major—indeed, principal—naval port, most certainly has a lot of veterans issues. There was a man on that occasion who had left the Army and was sleeping rough. He had come across real problems because he had taken to drink—he had obviously taken to drugs as well, which was also a very big issue.

Indeed, when my father served in the Navy—he went in as a boy sailor at the age of 14, serving in Dartmouth and subsequently in the second world war—he had the job of picking up the head of a man he was sharing a cabin with and throwing it over the side, into the sea. I think that would most certainly have given me the heebie-jeebies, I can tell you that, although it did not seem to affect him at all.

A number of Members have made a series of points in this debate which I fully agree with. I was going to talk a little bit about the position now, as we commemorate the Falklands war, 30 years on, but my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) has already dealt with that. However, we have to recognise that the families are the first people to get to know whether mental health issues are arising and how combat stress affects them. We need to remember that at the time when my father ended up having to deal with these issues, there were no mechanisms in place to look after his mental health or even try to take it forward. As others have said, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) has produced a very good report, which has very much formed the basis of Government policy in this area.

I ended up talking to Mind during the course of the last few days. The hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) and I are speaking as one, as she made the point that the amount of money devoted to mental health in Plymouth is an issue. It seems that money has been taken away from mental health to be given to those who suffer from physical ailments. I think that we most certainly need to look at that.

Last week, during the jubilee recess, I visited the Glenbourne mental health unit at the Derriford hospital. I was told that it had seen a significant rise in the number of people with mental health issues, especially from the military, and I was told how important it was to ensure that something was done about it.

We must make sure that we adopt a proactive campaign so far as stress and mental illness are concerned, and that we give our support to those organisations that are in the business of delivering it, while also ensuring that we have trained GPs to look after people. The Jesuits have a saying, do they not—“Give me the child until the age of eight, and I will show you the man”. That was very much the issue that my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) raised in her contribution, for which I was grateful.

Let me finish on a small note. We need significantly more joined-up government between Departments. We should not be talking only about the Ministry of Defence, but about the Department of Health, the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Work and Pensions. If we can do that, we can make real progress.