Mental Health Taskforce Report

Colleen Fletcher Excerpts

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Colleen Fletcher (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wilson. I congratulate the hon. Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris) on securing today’s debate on the excellent report from the independent mental health taskforce to the NHS in England. I reiterate many of the comments made so far, especially those about housing, jobs and the immediate environment in which someone lives. My constituency has shocking health inequalities, and improving all those things could lead to good mental health.

The report contains a series of recommendations that, if implemented in full, will lead to the introduction of essential reforms and the additional investment that our mental health services desperately need and people with mental health problems undoubtedly deserve. To understand why we need this fundamental step change in mental health provision in this country, we need look no further than the human and economic costs associated with the poor mental healthcare that has far too often been the norm.

The human costs are self-evident. They can be counted among the many vulnerable people with mental health problems who have been left to suffer in silence, with no help at all, stigmatised and shunted to the margins of society, their lives simply put on hold or irrevocably changed and ruined. I am talking about the many people for whom mental health provision has for too long been a second-rate, second-class service, and those who have been let down by the inadequacies of a system that is supposed to be there to support and care for them yet treats their body and their mind unequally. Regrettably, that has all too often been the reality for far too many people, simply because the way we think about and treat mental illness in this country has been woefully inadequate.

I reiterate that there are economic costs to such neglect, which are as unsustainable as the human costs are unacceptable. Failing to address mental illness through poor care has been a significant problem for decades in this country and costs the economy, the NHS and society dear. The taskforce’s report makes it clear that the economic cost is estimated to be £105 billion a year, as we have already heard. To address the challenges, we must, as the taskforce recommends, seek to transform services and support for people with mental health problems and ensure that everybody gets the right help at the right time, in the right place and from the right people.

Similarly, we must ensure that mental health is recognised as a priority for the NHS, Government, businesses, schools and society as a whole. That will enable us to promote good mental health, prevent poor mental health and respond effectively when mental health problems occur. If we are truly to achieve the ambition of parity of esteem for mental and physical health in the NHS we must, as a first step, ensure that the taskforce’s recommendations are delivered and funded in full. Transforming the way we deal with mental health is an enormous challenge, I know that, but one that we, as a country and a society, must tackle head-on for the future.