Mental Health (Discrimination) (No. 2) Bill

Sarah Wollaston Excerpts

Friday 14th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

Today’s debate sends a very powerful message, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) on choosing to present such an important Bill. It sends a message about recovery: that if a person has experienced a mental health problem in the past, that does not make the person unpredictable or dangerous, and that there should be no barrier to his or her full participation in public life or, indeed, any part of life. However, I think we also need to issue a call to arms. If we are to make people more confident about coming forward and seeking help at an early stage—confident that they will not be discriminated against later in life—we must ensure that primary care in particular is ready for them: that people who present their doctors with a mental health problem are taken seriously, and are given the support and help they need.

This has been a big week for mental health in Parliament. We have seen the launch of the Government’s strategy on suicide prevention as part of their overall mental health strategy, and we should pay tribute to that very effective strategy, which, again, sends a positive message. We should remind GPs, when thinking about suicide and depression, to ask their patients, “Are you depressed?”, to take the issue seriously and ask patients specifically whether they have had any suicidal thoughts, and then to deliver an effective treatment for them.

To anyone following this debate, I would say the same as my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) and the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones): “You will find that people will feel positive about you and will encourage you, so do have the confidence to seek help and tell your friends; and when you have recovered, make sure that you tell other people that you have recovered, and support them so that they too can seek help.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Miss Smith]

I recognise the subject that the hon. Gentleman raises, which he also mentioned earlier. I do not think that today is the right time for me to go into that matter in detail; the cross-party consensus might be affected if I did. We do need to get that process right, as we need to get right many processes of administration and welfare, in its broadest sense, across government. I am sure that my colleagues at the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department of Health will have heard his plea. As a member of the Government, I certainly want us to get that process right, and I will work with colleagues to achieve that.

To build on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne, we need to work with partners on the mental health strategy. It is not possible for the Government to say, “It shall be so.” We need to ensure that the right outcomes are delivered locally and are driven by good evidence. We must cast the net wide to do that. The challenges are enormous and extremely difficult. That can be seen, on an individual level, when we have conversations on this matter in our constituency surgeries. However, the rewards of getting this right are vast. That is part of the point of today’s debate.

It is often quoted that at least one in four of us will experience mental health problems at some point in our life. What is less often quoted is that about half of people with a lifetime mental health problem experience their first symptoms by the age of 14. That is a startling statistic among the sea of statistics in this debate. By promoting good mental health across society and by intervening early, particularly in the crucial childhood and teenage years, we can help to prevent mental illness from developing and mitigate its effects when it does. Only a sustained approach across the course of life will equip us to meet the enormous social, economic and environmental challenges, and to deliver the benefits to the people who need them, which is why we are here today.

When mental health services work well, they work well with the public sector, the private sector and the voluntary sector, and they help people to overcome disadvantage and to fulfil their potential. Any action on mental health, from a Government or otherwise, is not only a mental health strategy but a social justice strategy. I know that that is what all of us here today stand for.

[Dr Wollaston]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this matter is the responsibility not just of Government, but of non-governmental organisations? Only this week, the Health Committee saw the disappointing example of how the chair of the Care Quality Commission and that organisation sought to stigmatise a member of their own board with regard to what they alleged to be a past episode of mental illness.

[Miss Smith]

My hon. Friend is right that we need to encourage cultural change across a number of organisations. I hope she will forgive me for not responding to that example, because I was not there to see it, but we need to ensure that such stigmatisation is not possible, is not the done thing and is frowned on whenever it is seen or experienced. We need to stand up and speak up for that view, and whenever we can we need to frown on that stigma from a front row seat. One of the six objectives in the mental health strategy was exactly that—that fewer people will experience stigma and discrimination. As the House will know, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central set out, the strategy has the full backing and endorsement of the whole Government. My right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister has a long record of calling for the reform of mental health policy.

For negative attitudes and behaviour towards people with mental health issues to decrease, we need to improve public understanding of those issues and gain more sympathetic treatment of them in our mainstream media. Again, I refer to the excellent work that my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne did in June, has done since and will do in future.

I also pay tribute to my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), for the work that he has done. He has spoken passionately and often on these proposals, and he said in an interview with politics.co.uk in June 2009:

“Mental ill-health is still very much a taboo subject in Parliament as well as the work place and this must change. Mental ill-health affects as many as one in four of the working age population and it is crucial that Parliament leads the way in promoting a better understanding of mental health.”

That is still pertinent today, notwithstanding the steps that we are taking to ensure that the mental health taboo is well and truly broken. Momentum has been building behind the measures in the Bill for some time, as many hon. Members have shown in their comments today and their actions over time both inside and outside the House.