Mental Health

Nic Dakin Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jones]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. The starting point should be the medical history of those individuals. Someone at the Department for Work and Pensions has said that it is not possible to identify such individuals, but that is complete nonsense. The process my hon. Friend has just suggested should be the starting point.

Professor Harrington’s review of the process put forward the idea of mental function champions. The Government spun that idea out a bit, as though it was the big answer to the problem, and I actually fell for it at the beginning, thinking that those people would be the ones who would carry out the assessments. That was not the case, however; they are there to give advice to the Atos assessors. We still have assessors with no mental health qualifications.

Representatives of the charity Mental Health Matters, a good advocacy charity in the north-east, have just met Atos to ask about the champions, and a number of questions have been raised. Atos would not tell them how the champions were recruited, and there is no indication that they need any formal qualifications. I understand that they are given a two-day Atos in-service training course, but they do not interact with any of the royal colleges or other outside bodies. Remarkably, they are also not accountable to the DWP. I put it to the Minister that he needs to tell the DWP that this must be looked at again. The process is not only causing a lot of heartache and difficulty for many of our constituents; it is actually not a good use of public money. People are failing the tests and going to appeal. At least one of my constituents has been affected in that way. They sometimes go through the process and end up in a residential hospital for a month, which must cost more than the amount of benefit that might have been saved.

We also need tailor-made programmes for people with mental illness. We should consider a separate work stream that could include voluntary work, given that many people with mental illness find the transition back into work through voluntary work easier than being thrown straight back in. We also need a pool of employers who understand and are sympathetic towards people with mental illness. There is an idea that such people can just join the normal job market and that employers will just accept that they might not turn up for work for a day or a week because they are not feeling well, but that is not the case. Those people will not keep their jobs for very long.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

I was at a recent meeting of the Mind support group in Scunthorpe, and I was concerned to hear people saying that they were anxious about taking on voluntary work because of the impact it could have on their benefits and their access to other services. Does my hon. Friend think that that issue needs to be looked at?

[Mr Jones]

Yes, it does. If there were a separate work stream for those individuals, of which the voluntary sector was a part, we could use the voluntary sector to get people back into the world of work. I agree with my hon. Friend, however, that they should not be penalised for doing so through loss of benefits.

I also want to talk about the old issue of the NHS reorganisation. It provides some great opportunities for doing things differently, and there should be an opportunity for local providers to bring in the third sector. I have one problem with that, however. I am president of the local Mind, which has just received a contract to provide certain services, and the process it has to go through is very difficult. I am not suggesting for a minute that such organisations should not be performance managed, because there are some large contracts involved, but we need an easier system for applying for the contracts. We also need to ensure that when bodies are competing for the contracts, people can access the services.

Another area of concern is the increased waiting lists for IAPT services. I know that the world has changed since 1 April, and people who lobby on behalf of mental health services are going to have to change their lobbying tactics. It is important to ensure that commissioning groups have an understanding of mental illness and of the importance of IAPT services.

If we look at the Royal College’s report, we find that people are going through the system saying they are quite happy when they get a diagnosis, but are then told they might have to wait up to a year for a talking therapy—that is just no good. What we need—again, this will save the NHS and the economy money—is a quick service such as the IAPT service. I know from people in my own constituency and others who have written to me that the wait is totally unacceptable. If we want to make this work, we have to make sure we have a joined-up service and that people who want a diagnosis get the support they need quickly. Otherwise, people will be stuck in this no man’s land between diagnosis and treatment.

Another area on which the new organisation needs to focus is local government. Local government now has an important role in health care through health education and protection. The Royal College of Psychiatrists is working with councils on a project to have champions at the local level. It is important for local councils to have councillors or chief officers who can champion the need for mental health services locally.

I welcome the debate. It is important to talk about these subjects, and the more we do, the better. To adopt an old BT phrase, “We need to talk”. If we talk about it—whether it be in schools, the workplace or here—we will erase the stigma of mental illness. That has to be the goal: mental illness being treated just like any other long-term condition. People should not be afraid of admitting to it and should not feel that they cannot be helped. We also need to recognise that in many cases—including, I have to say, my own—it can be strength rather than a weakness.