Oral Answers to Questions

Rushanara Ali Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

It is intriguing that the shadow Secretary of State has chosen not to talk about a winter crisis, because it has not happened, despite the fact that he predicted it time after time. Let me tell him what was cavalier: the previous Labour Government’s refusal to give patients a right to opt out of giving their data to this programme, even though it was going on for their whole time in office. We believe that we should have a data revolution, but to do that we need to carry the public with us, which is why we need to have this important debate and give people the reassurance they deserve.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

6. What recent assessment he has made of the number of available mental health crisis beds for young people in England.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

14. What recent assessment he has made of the number of available mental health crisis beds for young people in England.

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Norman Lamb)]

NHS England has a rapid review under way to identify commissioning solutions to pressures on specialist beds for children and young people. It inherited varied provision across regions and a lack of capacity in some parts of the country for particular need. For the first time, available beds are monitored weekly, and small increases in capacity have already been secured.

[Rushanara Ali]

I thank the Minister for that answer, but 1,500 mental health beds have closed since 2011, which is causing a wider crisis, and a recent Care Quality Commission report found that, in one area over the previous year, 41 children had been detained in police cells because health-based places of safety were either not available or not staffed—and one of those children was 11 years old. How can that be acceptable?

[Norman Lamb]

The reduction in the number of mental health beds has been a long-term trend—it happened under the previous Labour Government—and rightly so, because we have to move away from institutional care. However, crisis beds must always be available. I completely agree that it is intolerable for children to end up in police cells, but that is not new; it has happened for many years and did not start in 2010. When we talk about parity of esteem, we mean it. There must be absolute equality between the ways in which mental and physical health are treated. Last week we launched a crisis care concordat to ensure that children do not end up in police cells.