Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Bill

Debate between Kelly Tolhurst and James Heappey

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 3rd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

My near neighbour, with whom I share probably the most beautiful diocese in the country, makes an interesting point, which she and I might jointly take up with the police and crime commissioner for Avon and Somerset. The decisions on how PCSOs are allocated are hers. It is not my experience in my constituency that PCSO numbers have been cut. In fact, I have been impressed by the service that we have received from PCSOs in Somerset during my time as MP for Wells. The Bill is not exclusively about the police—it is about the way in which we deal with people with mental health challenges.

[Kelly Tolhurst (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

It is really good that my hon. Friend has highlighted the role of PCSOs. In January, we will increase the number of PCSOs who police our communities in Kent, because we recognise that they play a key role in the transition from meeting people with mental health issues on the streets to being able to direct them to the right care at local level, rather than getting police officers directly involved at the first point. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is a good thing, and we must recognise that we are increasing numbers in some places?

[James Heappey]

I very much agree. I have no first-hand experience of policing in Kent, my hon. Friend will be pleased to know, but I certainly agree that PCSOs are important. I do not see them in any way as a poor substitute for police officers. The way in which PCSOs carry out their job is excellent. I am fortunate to have some excellent PCSOs serving towns and villages in my constituency, and they make a big difference by intervening and making sure that crime levels stay low.

We have spoken a lot about the police—inevitably so in my case, because my experience has come about as the result of a death in custody, and I wanted to share that with the House. This is really about a wider way in which we care for people with mental health conditions. Mental health is something I am passionate about, and I learned a great deal about it while serving in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Before doing so, I was very much a member of the club that said that people should just pull themselves together. The reality is that when you see people who are absolute heroes—strong, strong people—who have served in the Army for 20 years, and you see their head break, you stop making the distinction between someone having their leg blown off and someone having their head break because they have witnessed a trauma that was so profound that it did something to them and over which they had no more control that someone who has lost a limb. That led me to look keenly at what mental health provision looks like in my community.

I had quite an epiphany when I realised how important mental healthcare is. Today we are discussing how to deal with people in the moment of most acute crisis. That is a necessary discussion, but it must not distract us from the urgent need to discuss how to stop people getting to crisis point in the first place. Somerset’s mental health provision is quite hollow. We have more than adequate provision of acute mental health beds, and we have reasonable provision of community nursing, but we do not have the stuff in between: the crisis houses—the step-up, step-down facilities—that can help people to find a bit of space to avoid or see off the imminent danger of a critical episode. That could prevent their having to go to an acute facility where things might escalate even further and might stop the horrible situations we have been discussing arising.

We must also look at how we do much more upstream prevention involving mental health charities in particular. Their role is enormously important. In Wells, Heads Up, of which I am a patron, and Charley’s Memory in Burnham-on-Sea—again founded as a result of a real tragedy to do with mental health—do amazing work in our communities. They work voluntarily and charitably, but they do something that should be a really important part of a broad, deep network of mental health provision that helps to manage people through mental illness at the appropriate level and prevent their slipping into crisis as much as possible.

We must push even harder to break the taboo on mental health in our communities. If there were greater acceptance of mental health conditions and people were more willing to be open and to talk about the issue and support people with mental illnesses, fewer people would find themselves in crisis because they had become isolated and their vulnerability had become such a problem that they made a big cry for help or their illness escalated to crisis point. Parity of esteem is not just about money, although in Parliament the debate often focuses on that. It is about attitudes and acceptance too. We need a mental health system that has real depth so that we can make sure that people who are living with mental health conditions can do so with dignity, not being unnecessarily aggravated because they have unreasonable waiting times for mental healthcare, but supported by an understanding and supportive community.

Mental health workers do amazing things, and so do the police who have to work with those who are suffering from mental illness. Nothing that we are discussing today should be seen a criticism of what they do. They should understand that we understand, fully, the extraordinarily challenging circumstances in which they work day in, day out. I thank them for the extraordinary hard work that they do.