Vital Signs: Mental health

Briefing · Parliament

MPs and peers debate youth suicide charity collapse, mental health funding gaps and parity of esteem across the NHS

1. 01The collapse of Papyrus, the youth suicide prevention charity, dominated a Westminster Hall debate on 13 October secured by Liz Twist (Labour, Blaydon and Consett), who called for emergency support to fill the gap left by the closure of its HopeLine 24/7 service and warned that major government grant programmes for suicide prevention had ended without comparable replacement. Conservative shadow minister Gregory Stafford (Farnham and Bordon) noted that the government had chosen not to renew the £10 million suicide prevention grant fund and said he knew of no replacement of comparable scale. Minister Alison McGovern (Labour, Birkenhead) acknowledged the problem of short-term funding and said the forthcoming mental health strategy would address it, while confirming that four new community mental health centres would open in Hertfordshire as part of 159 centres nationally backed by £343 million.
2. 02At Prime Minister's Questions on 14 October, Natasha Irons (Labour, Croydon East) said one in five young people had a mental health condition and that young people in her constituency were waiting up to four years for support. The Prime Minister, Andy Burnham (Labour, Makerfield), said he wanted to guarantee mental health support for young people when they needed it and that a response to the Milburn review would follow shortly. Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat, St Albans) pressed for funding for a self-financing mental health in-patient hub in Hertfordshire; the Prime Minister replied that her specific proposal would not be taken forward but that the wider hub programme would serve the county.
3. 03During the Lords second reading of the Health Bill on 13 October, Baroness Hollins (Crossbench) argued that the integration the Bill sought to promote must include psychiatric expertise across the wider system and that parity of esteem for mental health still required substantial work. Lord Bradley (Labour) asked the government to confirm that every integrated care board would retain a non-executive director with specific oversight of mental health services, and Baroness Leaman (Liberal Democrat) raised concerns about where NHS England's national programmes for ADHD and autism would sit once that body was abolished. Dr Danny Chambers (Liberal Democrat, Winchester) said in the 13 October youth suicide debate that the removal of the mental health investment standard had seen the mental health share of NHS funding fall to 8 per cent while waiting lists reached one million children.
4. 04Several members across different debates raised the mental health consequences of inadequate or disrupted services for specific groups. Andy MacNae (Labour, Rossendale and Darwen) told the Baby Loss Awareness Week debate on 12 October that his wife had been unable to access specialist mental health support after the death of their daughter for eleven years and had eventually had her NHS career terminated on ill health grounds. Jen Craft (Labour, Thurrock) used the National Care Service statement on 15 October to call for a road map to bring home more than 3,000 people with a learning disability and autism from secure mental health units she described as inappropriate and in some cases actively harmful. Laura Kyrke-Smith (Labour, Aylesbury) told the IPP sentences debate on 15 September that prisoners she had met described the extreme toll of protracted uncertainty on their mental health, and asked what assessment the Secretary of State had made of that impact.
5. 05The Lords debate on agriculture and mental health on 17 September heard the Bishop of Hereford describe clergy and agricultural chaplains as on the front line of a mental health crisis in farming communities, while the Earl of Effingham (Conservative) asked why the government had closed the £10 million farming resilience fund and what would replace it. Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Labour) acknowledged the stress and mental health impacts caused by the suspension of the Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme, and confirmed the government was working with the farming community to improve its offer going forward.