Mental Health at Work

Baroness Sherlock Excerpts

Wednesday 1st November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe]

I entirely agree with the noble Lord and thank him for giving me early notice of his question. The West Midlands commission has undertaken important research into mental health and its impact on the public sector. Government officials are working positively with the West Midlands Combined Authority to explore ideas and undertake work that will support positive action on mental health in the region. The noble Lord is right to say that different things have to be looked at, including different ways of improving people’s health and well-being. Indeed, as the immediate past chairman of the advisory board of the Samaritans, this is something very close to my heart. However, I cannot confirm an answer to his question referring to costs, so I will write to him.

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, welcome this report. The authors state at the beginning:

“We start from the position that the correct way to view mental health is that we all have it and we fluctuate between thriving, struggling and being ill and possibly off work”.


I have to say that I love that; it is a really positive way to understand mental health. I realise that the Minister will need to take time to reflect on the recommendations in the report, but when she comes to respond, will she acknowledge that her department has a couple of specific responsibilities? The first is that it is an enormous employer with more than 80,000 staff: and, secondly, it runs programmes with the unemployed. Will she ask her department to think about recommending how it might go about modelling with its own employees a healthy environment for mental health? More specifically and perhaps more challengingly, will she reflect again on the programmes for assessing whether people who are suffering with mental health problems should be in work? I ask this because there have been a number of concerns that the nature of the assessments is actually making people’s mental health worse rather than better.