Mental Health Bill [Lords]

Debate between Kevin McKenna and Jen Craft

2nd reading
Monday 19th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Kevin McKenna]

My hon. Friend has jumped ahead of me on that—not surprisingly, given his background as a mental health nurse. That is absolutely true. We do need to invest more, but we need to think beyond the NHS. Although this is the Mental Health Bill and it has “health” in its name, this issue is much bigger than the services that the NHS can provide.

There is a weakness in this Bill. The concern I have, which several other Members have mentioned, is that it does not tie us down to a tight timeline for this transformation. The Bill provides a get-out. That is done to ensure that services in the community are properly set up, but I worry that that the timeline will slip and slip. The time to move is now. People have been languishing for too long in settings that do not offer them a therapeutic way forward, and in places that are frankly inhumane and breach what we would all consider to be our human rights. The Minister is here and listening, and I recommend that he thinks about how we can get an active plan, so that we do not let this issue slip, but actively ensure support for services in the community, invest in them where needed, and foster them.

[Jen Craft]

I very much support what my hon. Friend is saying about making sure that there is an active plan. One of my concerns is that implementation of this Bill will be delayed until community support is ready. Does he agree that it would be welcome if the Minister offered a reflection on what good looks like in this space, and what ready looks like, so that we know what we are aiming for?

[Kevin McKenna]

I absolutely agree. We should flip this around from a delay until we are absolutely ready to an active process of deciding what good looks like.

Two weeks ago in my constituency, I ran a mental health conference. That was largely because, as I was going around as a new MP talking to every different organisation I could, mental health was right at the top of nearly all their worry lists, whether it was the food bank, the schools, the police, the prisons, or organisations in my community that had set themselves up to support people with mental health. I have a MenTalk in Sittingbourne and a MenTalk in Sheppey; they work in different ways, but that shows the level of pressure that exists locally. All of those organisations brought out mental health as their biggest worry, even if it was not their primary purpose.

Just bringing people together and getting them to talk together—people who perhaps had not talked to each other until that point—really made a difference. You could see it in the room on that day. I am sure I am way behind the curve compared with a lot of other Members who have been doing this sort of stuff already, but for me, it really showed that we have got to be active in pushing this forwards. What we have learned from 2019 and the long-term plan for the NHS is that it is the implementation that matters. It is not the words in the strategy; it is getting an implementation plan really tight and fast on the ground. Given that the impact assessment talks about 2027 as a key point, I would like to see a commitment in the Bill to produce a workable plan by 2027 at the latest—one that can give us the road map we need for the future. That has been called for by organisations such as Mencap and the National Autistic Society, so I really commend it to the Minister.