Minister accuses Government of falling short in its pledge to tackle mental health

The gap between what the Government pledges to do to tackle mental health problems and the reality for patients on the ground is “growing wider”, Labour has claimed.

Luciana Berger, shadow mental health minister, today told MPs there is still a “fundamental inequality” between how mental health and physical health are treated as she warned that things are getting worse.

She said: “On this Government’s watch there has been an increase in the number of patients who report a poor experience of community mental health care.

“There are more patients that are having to travel hundreds of miles just to get a bed.

“The number of children being treated on adult wards, something that the Mental Health Act rightly says should not happen, has risen again this year.”

Ms Berger (pictured) added: “The gap between the rhetoric we hear from this Government and the reality for patients on the ground is growing wider.”

Introducing an opposition day debate on the subject in the House of Commons, Ms Berger said the issue has been “neglected for far too long” and while it has “come out of the shadows” in recent years there is still much that needs to be improved.

“There have been many important steps forward but ask anyone with a mental health condition and they will tell you that they still face stigma, prejudice and discrimination,” she said.

“Sadly there remains many areas where there hasn’t been the progress that we had hoped for and we on this side of the House have deep concerns about our nation’s mental health and the services and support that is available.”

Labour is calling on the Government to do three things to improve mental health care provision.

“First and foremost we are asking the Government to restore transparency to address the murky picture that we have of mental health funding,” Ms Berger said.

“Secondly we are asking ministers to address the fundamental inequality that currently exists within our NHS Constitution.

“Finally we are asking the Government to prioritise prevention and implement a fully cross-departmental plan to prevent mental health problems from developing in the first place.”

The Government decided not to include a right to access psychological therapy in the NHS Constitution and Ms Berger said that needs to change.

“The NHS constitution enshrines all of our rights to access drugs and other treatments but it does not extend this right to talking therapies,” she said.

Ms Berger said the Government’s decision “reinforces the existing bias in the system against mental health”.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt spoke about some “troubling societal changes” which increased the demand and need for mental health support.

Globally he said there had been an 80% increase in those living alone since the turn of the century, representing nearly a third of all households in the UK.

For children and young people, he said it was not just about exam pressure or insecurities around body image, but also the risks around social media.

Mr Hunt paid tribute to the “really important” progress made in the area of mental health under the last Labour government.

He also praised progress made during the coalition government, particularly in the provision of NHS talking therapies and improvements in dementia diagnosis rates.

Mr Hunt said he wanted to talk “very openly” about where more progress needed to be made.

He said: “The first thing is that we have far too much variation in the quality of services across the country and, indeed, opacity as to where services are good and where they are not satisfactory.

“I think it is wrong, as the person who is responsible for the health service, that I can’t tell you in very simple terms the relative quality of mental health provision in North Shropshire versus South Shropshire, or Cirencester versus Sheffield and we need to know that because we know from other areas of the health service that once you are transparent about the variations in care, people measure themselves against their peers and you get a huge amount of improvement.”

Mr Hunt said there was a need to urgently address the increase in eating disorders such as anorexia which he labelled a killer, adding between 5 and 20% of sufferers die.

He also said there was a need to deal with the pressures on CAMH (Child and Adolescent Mental Health) services, with referrals up 11% in 2014, enabling the service to deal with the extra demand and look at improving early intervention to reduce referrals.

The use of police cells also needed to be looked at he said, with a 55% reduction in their use over the last three years, but added they were still used 4,000 times in 2014.

Out-of-area placements for non-specialist care was another area which could progress further, he said.

Mr Hunt highlighted the “important step forward” in funding, arguing the Chancellor delivered a “record settlement” for the NHS in the spending review confirming a £10 billion real terms increase in funding for the NHS over the course of the Parliament.

Mr Hunt said it was “very significant” for mental health, adding: “That means we have the prospect of very real progress, and we need to give careful thought as to which areas to prioritise.”

Mr Hunt spoke about the introduction of independent Ofsted style ratings for mental health provision which he said would lead to a “very dramatic reduction in variation and improvement in care”.

He said: “As we increase investment in mental health we need better transparency showing us how that money is spent and that is why I’m pleased to say following consultation with the King’s Fund for the first time from next June we will have independently assured Ofsted-style ratings by CCG (clinical commissioning group) area that will tell us very simply CCG by CCG whether the mental health provision across the whole mental health economy is outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate.

“To my knowledge, we are the first country in the world to do that.”

Mr Hunt also spoke about the need for further progress across society in reducing stigma.

Conservative Liam Fox, a GP, told MPs early in his career he worked in an old-style mental health hospital.

He said: “It was a genuinely Dickensian nightmare and there was a great fashion, supported right across this House, to move towards care in the community.

“But the consequence of not having adequate capacity in the community meant that a lot of patients simply fell through the net. The point has already been made about the large mental illness population in our criminal justice system.

“What in fact we did was close down one type of inappropriate institution and end up with patients in a different type of inappropriate institution and call it progress.

“It is is simply not good enough and we need to do very much more to prevent patients who are mentally ill ending up being incarcerated in our criminal justice system when they should be being treated appropriately.”

Former Labour minister Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) said: “It is extremely welcome mental health has risen up the political agenda in recent years and I pay tribute to the many people outside this House and inside it who by speaking of their own experience have helped achieve that.

“But the higher public profile has not yet translated into delivery on the ground. In my own area, the public are still experiencing services being cut, they are still having to wait an unacceptably long time for talking therapy and other treatments.

“And in spite of the repeated warnings and assurances we have received in previous years about the scandal of people being sent out of area we saw a 23% increase in the number of patients sent out of area in the last year – more than 500 and in Devon, one of the worst performing parts of the country, 45 patients were sent miles away from their friends and their family.”

Labour MP Simon Danczuk said male suicide rates in his Rochdale constituency have increased from 14.7 deaths per 100,000 people in 2010 to the latest figure of 18.6 per 100,000 a year.

He noted the suicide rate in Rochdale is above the national average, also telling the debate: “Put simply, more people are killing themselves in Rochdale.

“And in Rochdale our council, like many others up and down the country, are faced with daunting cuts to its budget.

“The result in Rochdale has been it’s considering removing funding to the sum of just £20,000 for the award-winning Growth Project.”

Conservative Maggie Throup (Erewash) said people need to talk more about mental health and stop ignoring it in a similar style to how cancer was approached a few years ago.

She said: “People didn’t talk about cancer because people hoped it would go away, and in a similar way people haven’t been talking about mental health – hoping it will go away, but it hasn’t done.”

Labour former minister Kevan Jones, who was accused by Ken Livingstone of needing “psychiatric help” during a row over party defence policy, said attitudes are changing for the better in Parliament, the media and society.

He added: “Sadly, in my own party there are some parts that still need to go a little bit further in understanding mental health. But we are making great strides and they should be recognised.”

Dr Phillip Lee, Conservative MP for Bracknell, pondered why there had been an increase in depression, stress-related illness and eating disorders in the UK.

“I would say it reflects actually what is sick in our own society,” he said.

“Our drivers towards excess consumption that we can neither afford financially or indeed physically.

“I would say that it would be the breakdown of the family, the fact that people do not take their parental responsibilities as perhaps they should do on every occasion.

“The retreat of the church, to be replaced by what exactly? I’m not so sure that anything else has come forward to replace the church in terms of that community hub, that support for people in distress, from within communities, not necessarily from government.”

Fellow Tory MP Heidi Allen (South Cambridgeshire) told the House that mental health were not “dirty words” while Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat MP for North Norfolk, suggested the NHS should adopt a “zero suicide ambition”.

“This is not setting a target,” he said.

“It’s just to change the culture so that everyone focuses on saving lives.”

Rebecca Long Bailey, the Labour MP for Salford and Eccles, focused on the need to properly fund children’s mental health services.

“As we have heard today a significant proportion of lifelong mental health problems start in the teenage years yet only 6% of the mental health budget is spent on children and adolescent services,” she said.

Labour’s motion was defeated by 290 to 209, majority 81.

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