Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rosena Allin-Khan and Nadine Dorries

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ms Dorries]

The short answer to that question is no, and that is why we have committed an additional £500 million to address some of the issues that the hon. Gentleman highlights. However, I must reiterate that the majority of our targets, where they have been set, are being met. Sadly, in eating disorders—I hold my hands up—we are not meeting the targets that we want to, but as he may be aware, we are trialling four-week waiting targets for children and young people. The results of that review and pilot will be available soon.

We continue to look at ways in which we can increase access to services for children and young people. Children and young people have told me themselves, via organisations such as Barnardo’s, that they want their mental health services delivered in a different way. They do not want to go and sit in a village hall or a hospital, or wherever they may receive their services from community practitioners; they want some of their services delivered via their phones, laptops or computers. Obviously, one-to-one services have to be available where they are needed, but children and young people are demanding a change, and we are going through that change now.

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) raises a very important point and, frankly, I am shocked that the Minister seems so relaxed about it. Across the country, there are numerous children who have waited more than 400 days for help with autism; 280 days for post-traumatic stress disorder; 217 days for suicidal ideation; 195 days for treatment after an overdose—I could go on and on. Children should not have to wait so long for treatment. That will have a scarring impact on their development. These waiting times simply are not acceptable, so will the Minister apologise to these children, and can she explain where it went so wrong?

[Ms Dorries]

I do not believe that meeting almost all our targets for NHS waiting times for mental health services, with £2.3 billion a year of investment into our NHS and no NHS mental health service closing during the entire pandemic, has been a failure. Of course I am sorry for those children and young people who cannot get access to services as quickly as they want; that is exactly why we committed an additional £500 million and established a mental health recovery plan: so that we can put community services in place to reach those who have been impacted most by the pandemic over the past 15 months. We have a long-term plan in place, with the investment that the NHS tells us that that long-term plan needs to provide the very services that we want to provide. The mental health of children and young people is this Government’s priority. We will continue to invest, and are proving to continue to invest, to make sure that those children and young people access the services they need.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rosena Allin-Khan and Nadine Dorries

Tuesday 13th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ms Dorries]

I thank the hon. Lady for her important question. The mental health and wellbeing recovery action plan published on 27 March this year aims to respond to the impact of the pandemic on people’s mental health, specifically targeting groups that have been most impacted. She mentioned the Good Grief Trust, and I mentioned the £10.2 million of funding that we have allocated recently. That is on top of the £2.3 billion a year for general mental health, which includes bereavement counselling, and the £500 million additional spending that we received in the spending review. Some of that money did go to the Good Grief Trust, which has done a fantastic job. It has been signposting services by putting cards in doctors’ surgeries and in A&E departments in hospitals so that people have immediate access to a line, but there are 700 other charities across the UK that are providing bereavement and grief counselling services to many members of the public. We recognise that the demand is high, but the services are there and available.

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

With your permission, Mr Speaker, I will pay a tribute to my father, Mohammad Aslam Khan, who passed away a few days ago. Not only was he a keen cricketer and an amazing dancer, he was also a champion of equality. He was incredibly strong and brave until his very last breath and he shall be missed beyond measure. I extend a huge thank you to all the team at St George’s, especially the marvellous team on Dalby ward, also to Victor and the incredible staff and carers at Ronald Gibson House and to a wonderful nurse called Anne Wheeler. My brother and I saw at first hand that not all angels have wings.

Covid-19 has stripped the humanity out of grieving, with millions being unable to attend funerals, say final goodbyes, or be with loved ones following a death. Last year, the Government provided £10.2 million to mental health organisations to ensure that services could continue during the pandemic. Many people have been relying on the support of dedicated bereavement organisations to help them cope, yet the extra financial support ended on 1 April. Will the Minister please consider reviewing this vital funding immediately to ensure that no one has to go through bereavement alone?

[Ms Dorries]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend and her brave words about her much missed father. Politics divides us, but grief, for many reasons, unites us across this House. I have personally declared to my hon. Friend that I am here should she need me. I pay tribute to her for her bravery, being here today so soon after the loss of her wonderful father. I hear her request; it is constantly under review. Bereavement services are incredibly important to me personally and to many of us. She mentioned the £10.2 million. There are 700 bereavement charities, including the Good Grief Trust. We monitor carefully how people access bereavement services. We know that there is an increased need at the moment and that is being watched very carefully. My hon. Friend is incredibly brave.

Women’s Health Strategy

Debate between Rosena Allin-Khan and Nadine Dorries

Monday 8th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for the advance copy of the statement. I wish every woman in the House and throughout the country a very happy International Women’s Day.

It is welcome that the Government want to understand the plight of women throughout the country, but although the Minister said that this strategy is the first of its kind, in reality it is not. We heard much that was in this announcement when the Government launched the women’s mental health taskforce in 2017. If the Government took this matter seriously, it would be a first. The Minister responsible for mental health at the time, the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), said:

“This report is a call to action for all providers, commissioners and practitioners across the health care system to drive forward the ethos of trauma- and gender-informed mental health care.”

That echoes what the Minister just said, so why are the Government asking the exact same questions four years later?

A multitude of health concerns are unique to women and are often overlooked. In hospital, I hold the hands of women in their darkest times: young women and girls presenting with eating disorders; trans women admitted after suicide attempts and substance abuse because they had been made to feel as though they do not belong; and women of colour presenting far too late with conditions that could have been easily treatable if they had found healthcare more accessible. I meet many women victims of domestic violence. They use healthcare services more than non-abused women, so I hope to see the Government’s upcoming violence against women and girls strategy address their needs.

The coronavirus crisis has had a disastrous impact on many women, and I have been honoured to listen to colleagues share their heartbreaking experiences of baby loss. My heart breaks for all those women who have had to go through that alone during the pandemic. What support will be offered to women who experience baby loss without their partners by their side? Within maternity services there are huge inequalities. The Minister is right to highlight the fact that black women are four times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth, and I welcome the launch of the forum, but the Government have known about these inequalities for years, so why has there not been action sooner? The Government are running a separate sexual and reproductive health strategy; would it not have made more sense to bring it, as part of that working, into this? A part of this which is widely stigmatised is the menopause. How will the Government be seeking to engage women who have to go through difficulties throughout the menopause?

The “Five Year Forward View for Mental Health” recommended that by 2020-21, in England, 30,000 more women each year would be able

“to access evidence-based specialist mental health care during the perinatal period”

and said that that was important. Can the Minister tell us whether that target has been met? Today, it is huge news that a woman of colour has spoken about her mental health struggles during pregnancy. Many women face difficulties but stay silent, afraid to seek help. With stigma attached to mental illness, the Government must ensure that evidence is collected from all of our ethnically diverse communities.

Women are still being misdiagnosed in 2021. With male bodies being seen as the default body, there is a huge historical data gap in understanding women’s health needs. It is shocking that women are 50% more likely to be misdiagnosed following a heart attack simply because our symptoms differ from those of men. What research will the Government commission to bridge that divide?

Finally, pay is a gendered issue. Women are 82% of the social care workforce and 90% of the nurses. Can the Minister justify the real-terms pay cut to our frontline NHS staff? Will she end poverty wages in social care? We need healthcare to work for every woman across the UK—young and old, white and women of colour, cisgender and transgender. We cannot wait any longer. Women’s health and wellbeing should not be an annual PR exercise. We need action and we need action now.

[Ms Dorries]

I join the hon. Lady in wishing every woman across the world a happy International Women’s Day. She opened by talking about the mental health taskforce and saying it is not the first of its kind, but it absolutely is. It was a five-year project that the NHS used to bring together women and organisations from across the healthcare sector to develop a mental health plan—a five-year view—which it did and reported on. As she knows, partly as a result of that, we now have the long-term plan in mental health.

The hon. Lady also spoke passionately, as she always does, about the patients she meets as part of her work and the women who are suffering from eating disorders—sadly, that has been a tragic cost of covid. We know that two groups have been affected by the past 12 months in the mental health sphere: people, including women, with pre-existing mental illness; and, in particular, young women aged 15 to 26, in whom we have seen an explosion in the number of referrals—I believe the figure is 22% for young women seeking help with eating disorders. We have committed funding during the spending review, when £500 million was announced, and I announced £79 million on Friday. Part of that is going to deal with the problems that we have as a result of the pandemic, and with young women and girls—and in some cases young men—who are suffering from eating disorders.

The hon. Lady talked about the stillbirth and neonatal target of halving the number of stillbirths by 2025. We are way ahead of our target on that. The Office for National Statistics published new data last week, and I believe we are looking towards a 30% figure already. We are way ahead of target, and that is a result of the measures that have been put in place in the maternity safety arena, including the saving babies’ lives care bundle and the early notification scheme.

I reiterate that what we are announcing today is a call for evidence from women everywhere in the UK: from every organisation and every friend, every partner, every family of every woman.[Official Report, 12 March 2021, Vol. 690, c. 5MC.] The link has been published today. I published it on the Government website and it is on the Department of Health and Social Care website and on my Twitter feed. It is a link that women can easily access using their phones or their laptops, and it takes a few minutes to complete. We want to develop the first ever women’s health strategy within the Department of Health and Social Care that will deal with all the issues—there are too many for me to talk about now—and all the ways in which women have been affected. These will include research funding and cohorts of trials not using women, using all the information that we have from Paterson and Cumberlege and from women stating clearly that women are not listened to in the healthcare sector. To address that, we need to hear not just from the Paterson women and the mesh women who spoke to Cumberlege; we need to hear from all women everywhere, and that is why we have launched this call for evidence today, to develop this strategy before the end of the year.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rosena Allin-Khan and Nadine Dorries

Tuesday 23rd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ms Dorries]

I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend, and I would also like to pay tribute to Sir Simon and his co-chairs for their comprehensive work. The Secretary of State said in the House last year that

“the Wessely review is one of the finest pieces of work on the treatment of mental ill health that has been done anywhere in the world.”—[Official Report, 23 June 2020; Vol. 677, c. 1164.]

I know that the review was welcomed by hon. and right hon. Members across the House. We are taking forward the vast majority of Sir Simon’s 154 recommendations, either directly or by advancing the principles put forward by the review. The White Paper document contains the Government’s response to each of the recommendations.

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

The overhaul of the Mental Health Act has been long awaited. It is people who have to be at the heart of the legislation, and that includes staff. The promises that the Secretary of State has made rely on a workforce: our fantastic frontline mental health staff, of which there are simply too few at present. I asked him last month to outline when we would get the workforce settlement and what reassurance he could give on filling the training places. We are still waiting for an answer. Would the Minister like to answer now?

[Ms Dorries]

Work is under way; Health Education England is looking at proposals, particularly for the training of mental health workers. I wish to highlight one area where we can see that happening rapidly: in the mental health support teams that are going into schools. People are coming out of universities with their degree and going through a year’s training so that we can get them into schools faster to work with children and young people. The hon. Lady is right; the mental health workforce is at the heart of these reforms. I assure her that we have seen an increase in the number of people applying to be mental health nurses—and nurses across the healthcare estate—and that will have a knock-on effect on the number of people we have working on the wards with people who have severe mental illness.

Covid-19

Debate between Rosena Allin-Khan and Nadine Dorries

Monday 2nd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Allin-Khan]

I have engaged with such serious subjects when undertaking all four of my science degrees.

Speculation that self-isolation could be reduced from 14 to seven days does nothing to clarify how people can keep their families safe. [Interruption.] I am enjoying hearing the chuntering; I would welcome anybody who wished to intervene on me because I am well up for it, as they say in Tooting. I do enjoy debates—in fact, I would welcome debate, because what always happens is that I make my comments from the Dispatch Box, sit down and listen to the Minister, for whom I have a great deal of respect, but then I have no ability to intervene, so bring it on.

The resilience that British people have shown over the past seven months has been remarkable. In the face of uncertainty and fear, our communities have come together to support one another time and again. Like everyone in the Chamber, I am so proud of all those who helped to deliver food and medicines to our most vulnerable at the height of the crisis, and I have been incredibly moved by all those businesses, struggling themselves, that provided free school meals locally when the Government failed to act. It touches me to witness the hope and humanity of our communities and of individuals such as Marcus Rashford, but it is shameful that that has been necessary as a result of this Government’s actions.

It breaks my heart that more children than ever will know the taste of hunger in 2020 and that they will feel the cold that comes from their parents being unable to pay the bills. The last Labour Government lifted more than 1 million children out of poverty. We need more action like that, not Conservative Members blaming chaotic parents for child hunger, alleging that free school meal vouchers go direct to crack dens and brothels, or spinning the narrative that it is the sole responsibility of local communities to ensure that no child goes hungry. Where is the compassion and humanity from the Government? I hope we do not have to continue asking ourselves that question throughout winter.

Certainly, across our communities, compassion and humanity are in no short supply among our frontline health and care staff—on that we can all agree. Those frontline staff have been placed in an impossible situation throughout the year. Will the Government commit to ensuring that those staff have adequate levels of PPE across the winter, and will they commit to frequent testing of our frontline staff, who put their lives on the line day in, day out? The impact of the neglect of our NHS staff is that almost 2 million days were lost to mental ill health during the first wave of the pandemic. I fear the effects of the second spike this winter. We can stand on our doorsteps and clap, but why can we not give them the support they truly deserve?

Will the Minister agree to meet to discuss our care for carers proposal to address the mental health needs of our 3 million health and care staff? Will the Minister agree to meet me to discuss the care for carers plan? Will the Minister agree to work cross-party together to support our frontline NHS and care workers?

[Ms Dorries]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Dr Allin-Khan]

Of course.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Dorries]

Obviously, I cannot answer from a sedentary position. On the care package, the hon. Lady will need to meet another Minister, but I will take her request on. I am the Minister for mental health, not for care workers, but I will pass that on for her.

[Dr Allin-Khan]

It is a package of mental healthcare for our frontline NHS and care workers, which I am sorry the Minister seems to have forgotten. I have raised it a number of times. Is she agreeing to meet me to discuss the care for carers mental health package for our frontline NHS and care staff?

[Ms Dorries]

I will provide a detailed explanation of what we are doing for frontline workers in my own speech.

[Dr Allin-Khan]

I take that as a no. I give the Minister the opportunity to give me a straight yes or no answer. Will she kindly agree to meet me to work cross-party together for the betterment of the mental health of our frontline NHS and care staff—yes or no?

[Ms Dorries]

Madam Deputy Speaker, this is a rather unusual way of closing a debate. We have a very comprehensive package in place for key workers, which has been provided by the NHS, and I am happy to detail that when I give my closing speech.

[Dr Allin-Khan]

I am very familiar with the detail, which the Minister uses every single time we have a debate, but I will take that as a hard no and continue with my speech.

For the mental health of people across the country—[Interruption.] The policy is very clear. The Minister is chuntering from a sedentary position; would she like to intervene?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rosena Allin-Khan and Nadine Dorries

Tuesday 6th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

It has been six months of uncertainty for our country’s children and their parents, with schooling cancelled, the exam results fiasco and now students trapped in uncertainty in their university accommodation. Despite the Education Secretary recognising that there was a serious impact on young people’s mental health, yet again it seems that the Government have no plan. Children and young people are being failed. When will the Minister finally address the pending mental health crisis in our schools, colleges and universities?

[Ms Dorries]

I just do not recognise the picture that the hon. Lady has presented. We are investing at least £2.3 billion in mental health support and mental health provision. That investment translates to 345,000 children and young people who will be able to access mental health support via NHS-funded health services and school-based mental health support teams. Spending on children and young people’s mental health services is growing faster than the overall spend on mental health, which itself is growing faster than the overall NHS budget. Children and young people’s mental health is our priority, and we are showing that by investing in it. The picture that she paints is, I am afraid, completely not the case.