Mental Health Bill [Lords]

Claire Young Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 19th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab)]

I am delighted to speak about this new Mental Health Bill. It follows up on the Mental Health Act 1983, which is as old as our Secretary of State, as we heard. What I have heard throughout the debate is that mental health affects us all in some way. It touches all of us, whether personally or through people we know really well.

I welcome the greater protections under the Bill, especially for people with learning disabilities. I also welcome early intervention, the stress on out-of-hospital care and the idea of advance choice. People who have repeated psychoses know exactly what they want when they are well. When they become ill, they can become paranoid about their family and their friends, and they are not rational. That is one of the reasons why sometimes they need to be detained under the Mental Health Act. If they have an advance choice document, they can at least say what they would like while they are in a normal state of mind. That is important, and I look forward to that measure.

I like the fact that police stations are being removed as a place of safety. I am concerned about how sections 135 and 136 of the Mental Health Act are being used. I notice that there are some schemes in which mental health workers go out with the police and work together with them, and that is crucial. A close relative of mine became extremely unwell, though it was not quite as awful as what happened to the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire (Ian Sollom). First, they were sectioned in an A&E department, and then no bed could be found for 48 hours for this poor relative of mine. The heroic nurses and consultants had to look after someone who was acutely psychotic. That simply is not is not tolerable in our system. We need to find a place quickly for people who are mentally ill, and we have to make sure that they get the best treatment, so that they can get better quickly, while protecting the rest of the NHS.

This close relative of mine was moved to a bed 140 miles away from her family. We must ensure that we get more sufficient beds and more local provision. I know that will take time, and that mental health provision is not in a good state, but I hope that with this legislation and our new Labour Government, we can change that, so that people do not have to travel out of area for mental health provision.

I am impressed by the idea of crisis hubs. I have worked with the Stroud crisis team for many years as a GP, and I have always felt that, given a bit more strength and a bit more resource, they could keep a lot of people out of hospital and from being sectioned, but they need that resource. They also need close working with consultant psychiatrists.

[Claire Young (Thornbury and Yate) (LD)]

One of my constituents waited more than eight hours in a mental health crisis for 111 to get back to them, in which time their mental health deteriorated. Previously, they accessed a dedicated local support line, which gave them prompt access to professional support. Does the hon. Member agree that prompt access to support in a crisis is vital to reducing the need for the greater degrees of intervention covered by this Bill?

[Dr Opher]

That is certainly true, but we need to be careful, because part of the issue is the resources for mental health, rather than the Mental Health Act. We must not blur the two. The current Government are putting 8,500 mental health workers into the system, and I am delighted about that. Hopefully, it will prevent the waits for mental health assessments that people are having to put up with.

I want to say something about “appropriate medical treatment” and “therapeutic benefit”, to which the Bill refers. Some 8.7 million people in this country are on antidepressants, and about 25% of those people are trying to get off them. The harm that these drugs can do includes an increased risk of suicide when people are first going on to them and when they are coming off them, as we have seen in a couple of recent, tragic cases. They can also cause fairly long-term sexual dysfunction. I am asking the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency to put proper warnings on its leaflets, and I am also asking for a special service to help people come off antidepressants, because doing so is extremely difficult and most GPs are not particularly well informed about the best ways of doing it. It has to be done extremely slowly.

My hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister) talked about ADHD and autism, and what should be done about neurodiversity. I feel that we should be extremely careful in mental health services not to over-medicate people with so-called neurodiversity, and I look forward to speaking to my hon. Friend about that. I had to nip out of the Chamber for half an hour earlier, to talk to the head of a neurodiversity taskforce which will report in July. What I think it needs to do is bring about a much more supportive service rather than going straight for medication, which is what seems to happen when people are referred to private psychiatric clinics. At present, the level of Ritalin-like substances with which people with ADHD are treated has increased by a factor of 500%—and, interestingly, that increase has occurred in social class 1 rather than social class 5. There is something here that we need to get a grip on: we need to provide proper services for people with ADHD.

I was interested by the comment from the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Sir Jeremy Hunt) about families. When it comes to mental health, families are crucial, and I would like to adapt the Bill slightly to make them much more central and responsible. The concept of a family could be extended to certain other people whom a person, when well, could nominate, but families are the crux in a lot of psychiatric care. Their input must be valued, and they must be involved.

This is a very good Bill, and it is about time we had it. I support all its greater protections, and I believe that it will reduce the number of compulsory detainments.