Mental Health Bill [Lords]

Danny Chambers Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 19th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)]

I thank the Secretary of State for introducing this really important Bill, and the Minister for his proactive engagement with us earlier this week. Before I entered Parliament, I was a trustee of the veterinary mental health charity Vetlife, which cares for the mental health of the veterinary profession—I have had to clarify before that it is not a mental health charity for animals with mental health issues. I became a trustee of the charity because my really close friend Sarah, at the age of just 31, when she had her whole life and career ahead of her, took her own life; I took her place as a trustee. Getting the news that I had lost her was one of the most painful experiences of my life. Many hon. Members in the Chamber will have suffered similar experiences with their friends and loved ones.

I speak about Sarah because while we are in this place, we rightly often discuss mental health issues using statistics—we talk about waiting times, workforce shortages and the economic impact—but we must never forget that there are individual lives behind the numbers, and nearly every person in the country is affected in some way. That might be through their own struggles or those of a loved one, or through grief after someone they care about has lost their battle with depression.

To return briefly to statistics, veterinary medicine—the profession I come from—has a suicide rate four times the national average. It is a small profession where everyone knows everyone, and everyone has lost a friend or a colleague to suicide. I share that not just for awareness, but because it reminds us that certain groups are at much higher risk—they are more vulnerable than others—and we should do much more to identify and support them.

[Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)]

My hon. Friend, as a veterinarian, will know that farmers also suffer with significant mental health issues. My constituents are under immense pressure following the family farm tax and the sudden closure of the sustainable farming incentive. Alongside that, they work extremely long hours, and the unpredictability of farm work means that it is more difficult for them to access mental health support and doctors’ appointments. Does he agree that we should introduce regular mental health MOT checks at key points in people’s lives—when they are most vulnerable to mental ill health—particularly for those in rural areas where there are barriers to accessing support?

[Dr Chambers]

My hon. Friend will not be surprised that I agree with her; she may as well have read the next bit of my speech. She is completely right. Farmers, those working in agriculture, military veterans and their families, mothers in the first year after childbirth, people living in poverty and the LGBTQ+ community are just a few of the groups that we know are at heightened risk.

We already take a proactive approach when it comes to physical health; we have targeted cancer screenings for at-risk demographics. We should take the same approach to mental health. That is why the Liberal Democrats have long called for properly resourced community mental health hubs, which could reach people before they reached crisis point. We are also calling, as my hon. Friend just did, for regular mental health check-ups at key life stages—for example, when someone has just given birth or just been discharged from the Army.

[Freddie van Mierlo (Henley and Thame) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is outlining the treatment options for patients. New medicines are also incredibly important, and groundbreaking research is happening at the Warneford hospital in Oxfordshire, a mental health hospital that is in desperate need of investment. Treatment options and new medicines go hand in hand, so does he agree that the Government should get behind the Warneford and invest in it?

[Dr Chambers]

I agree with my hon. Friend and thank him for his intervention.

Mental health MOTs could help to catch at-risk people early, so that we can start treating them before the problems develop further. I am sure that for all Members present mental health issues are among the top areas in our email inboxes and our correspondence. We receive emails from desperate parents of young people who are left on waiting lists for years throughout their schooling, and from adults falling between the cracks of an overstretched system. We should probably acknowledge that these are not anomalies. They are the symptoms of a system that is under immense strain. This long-awaited Mental Health Bill is a very welcome step, but it cannot be the only step, because at the heart of our approach must be the simple principle that prevention is better than cure.

[Victoria Collins (Harpenden and Berkhamsted) (LD)]

I absolutely support the idea that we need to invest in prevention—I am 100% behind that—but I have also spoken to many constituents who have issues with emergency health care. One of my constituents, Ed, sadly took his own life. He went into A&E undergoing a psychotic episode and was left simply with a phone number and no assessment. Hours later, he was lost. We need to ensure that those who need emergency treatment get it on the spot, as well as investing in prevention. Does my hon. Friend agree with that principle?

[Dr Chambers]

I totally agree, and I will come on to the care of people once they have been discharged after an acute mental health episode, because it is a hugely emotive and problematic situation.

We need a comprehensive mental health strategy that sees mental health not just as a clinical issue but, as the Secretary of State said, something that needs to run through housing, education, employment and justice. Good clinical services are vital, but we cannot medicate or refer our way out of a mental health crisis. Many mental health issues are often rooted in deeper challenges including poverty, housing, insecurity, loneliness, debt and trauma. These are not medical problems, but they put people at huge risk of developing mental health issues, and if we are serious about prevention we must tackle these root causes head-on.

The Bill focuses very much on the rights and treatment of people once they are admitted to mental health units, which is essential, but what is just as important—as my hon. Friend the Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) has just highlighted—is what happens when they are discharged and what support they get in the community to prevent a relapse. In Winchester, we have seen a brilliant initiative between local NHS mental health teams and Citizens Advice. Teams from Citizens Advice are in a mental health unit called Melbury Lodge, and they help mental health patients with all their life admin—the bills, the correspondence—so that they are not discharged back into the community only to come home to a load of outstanding credit card bills and demands to repay their personal independence payments, for example.

What is remarkable is that every pound spent on that initiative saves £14.08 in cost avoidance for the NHS through shorter in-patient stays, fewer readmissions, better engagement of services once they are discharged and a reduction in medication use. This is a win-win for staff, patients and the taxpayer, but it is a pilot project and there is no funding secured for it to continue, despite the proven cost-saving benefits. We urge the Government to look seriously at rolling out such initiatives nationwide.

My hon. Friend the Member for Dorking and Horley (Chris Coghlan) has been passionately campaigning since entering this House to ensure that families have a greater input into medical decisions when there are questions over the mental capacity of vulnerable patients, and I invite him to make an intervention now.

[Chris Coghlan (Dorking and Horley) (LD)]

I thank my hon. Friend. As he knows, in my maiden speech eight months ago I pledged that Fiona Laskaris would succeed in changing the law that had prevented her from saving her autistic son, Christopher, from murder. Fiona is here today. Despite pleading for years, she was never able to obtain a mental capacity assessment for her son. As we heard from the Secretary of State, the Government are now seriously looking at an amendment that would both honour Christopher’s legacy and save lives. Does my hon. Friend support that amendment?

[Dr Chambers]

I thank my hon. Friend for that moving intervention and offer my condolences to those in the Gallery. We appreciate that the Secretary of State is seriously considering an amendment that might help save lives.

Early intervention cannot just be a slogan; it has to be the foundation of a functional system. Last week, I sat around a campfire with the amazing team at the Winchester youth counselling services. That charity has a nature therapy programme in which 11 to 16-year-olds can go camping, have walk-and-talk therapies and do bushcraft and outdoor cooking. While we were toasting our marshmallows, the team were talking about the free, confidential mental health support that they offer, providing services such as one-to-one counselling and a weekly wellbeing walk-in session. By immersing young people in nature, this programme helps to reduce stress and anxiety and fosters emotional wellbeing and resilience. Crucially, the services are accessible without the need for a doctor’s referral or diagnosis. Young people can self-refer, ensuring that support is available promptly when it is needed most. This is why Liberal Democrats have been calling for mental health hubs for young people in every community. We support the Government’s campaign for a mental health professional in every primary and secondary school—not just an occasional visit or a pilot scheme, but a permanent funded presence.

[Edward Morello (West Dorset) (LD)]

Just to follow up on my hon. Friend’s point about the importance of mental health hubs, in West Dorset the only child and adolescent mental health services centre is in Dorchester, and for many people in my constituency, especially young people, that means at least a 30-mile round trip to access services. In rural Britain, we are lucky if transport links exist, and those that do are often limited. That makes accessing services nearly impossible, which is what makes hubs so important.

[Dr Chambers]

I totally recognise the importance of that intervention.

We also need a system that is much easier to navigate. A psychiatrist came to see me in my office in Winchester and told me that his son had been referred to CAMHS. He said that despite the fact that he and his wife worked in the medical profession, they had really struggled to access the help that they needed. He said:

“If we can’t navigate the system, what chance does anyone else have?”

That is one reason that Liberal Democrats are calling for a mental health commissioner: someone to champion families, cut through bureaucracy and help people to get the support they need before things get worse. The system needs to be simplified, both for the parents and families who are trying to access the service and to allow the system itself to function.

For years, Liberal Democrats have campaigned for mental health to be treated equally with physical health, and we welcome the commitment to parity in the King’s Speech, but it must be backed by action. The Darzi report showed that mental health accounts for around 20% of the NHS case burden—as the Secretary of State acknowledged—yet it receives just under 10% of the funding. For this reason, we want to ensure that the mental health investment standard is maintained and strengthened, and not quietly scrapped or watered down. The Secretary of State also highlighted the scale of this challenge. Around 1 million people are on waiting lists for mental health services, but importantly, 340,000 children are on mental health waiting lists and some of them are waiting an average of 15 months for care, which is a huge chunk of their educational time and personal development. This is not a crisis that is waiting to happen; it is a crisis that is already here.

In this economic crisis, some people ask how can we afford to invest in mental health, but the real question is how can we afford not to do so, because we already pay the price in lost productivity, emergency call-outs, A&E admissions and—most tragically of all—lives cut short. We must spend to save.

The hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) spoke about spending time with police. I have done the same thing—a fascinating and informative exercise. I encourage everyone to go on patrol with their police. In Winchester, the police say they spend up to 40% of their time responding to mental health-related incidents. We know that patients turn up to A&E in mental health crisis, many already on a mental health waiting list. I heard that the average amount of time someone spends in a mental health crisis in Winchester’s A&E, often needing individual supervision, is 18 hours. That is not sustainable, because we are using the most expensive part of our health system to do the work that should be happening earlier, which would be more cost effective for the taxpayer and provide better outcomes for patients.

Finally, I pay tribute to all those on the frontline: the nurses, counsellors, psychiatrists, doctors, therapists, support staff and charities who prop up a system that should be supporting them. We very much look forward to working constructively with the Government to improve the Bill, and we support it. We will keep pushing until we live in a country where mental health gets the same attention and care as physical health.