Francis Report

Steve Rotheram Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman has acknowledged that it was I who appointed Robert Francis to begin the process of an independent inquiry into what went wrong. I shall say more in a moment about what I did, why I did it, and why I stand by what I did, because in my view what I did was help to get to the truth while also helping Stafford hospital to recover.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

As my right hon. Friend knows, my wife is a community psychiatric nurse who sees mental health services at the sharp end. Does he agree that the coalition seems to view mental health as a Cinderella service rather than an integral part of the NHS?

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend is right: it is the poor relation that has always been on the fringes of the system, and is always the first service to be targeted for cuts. That has happened again in these difficult times. The Government are cutting mental health services more deeply than the rest of the NHS, and that has led to all the problems that I have been describing.

I went to Stafford recently to meet campaigners who are working to support the hospital. One of them told me that because of the lack of available mental health beds, beds had had to be found in the hospital for people who were experiencing serious mental health crises. That is what begins to happen when we do not have adequate capacity on the ground. Government Members say that this is not relevant, but it is directly relevant to all the matters that we are discussing today.