Mental Health Bill [Lords]

Debate between Tom Hayes and Luke Evans

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 8th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

Before I was elected, I ran mental health and complex needs services for five years. I saw a landscape that had pretty much been devastated under the Conservatives, and one way in which it had been devastated was through the loss of Sure Start. The Institute for Fiscal Studies produced a report this year that showed that Sure Start led to a 50% reduction in hospitalisations for 12 to 14-year-olds. The shadow Minister talks about the ways in which we can deliver better mental health. Does he agree that Labour’s roll-out of a revamped Sure Start is just one of the many ways in which we are helping to improve children’s mental health?

[Dr Evans]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point, but he has also missed the point. He gives me the opportunity to point out that one way in which the previous Government dealt with this issue was by bringing forward the mental health investment standard, under which the proportion of spending on mental health had to mirror the spending on physical conditions. That was starting to lead to real change. Alas, under this Government, there is a concern that the standard has not been met. We know that the proportion of mental health spending has fallen under this Government, according to the written ministerial statement that they put out.

That leads me on nicely to the point that I wanted to raise: how will we fund the models that are coming forward? That is the crux of the matter that people outside the House will be looking at; it is a direct question, and it is the only one that I have in this debate. We on this side of the House have raised this issue in the debates we have had on both palliative care and mental health, and I raised it with the Minister only last week. The Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran), has raised this question again and again. Are the Government committed to the investment standard or not? Is it something that they have dropped? The House and the wider public need to know, so that we can plan for service provision. If the Government are dropping it, that is on them, and they need to explain the reasons why they are doing so. Maybe there is alternative investment, but as a starting point, the investment standard will be crucial in dealing with the mental health challenge, which is growing despite the pandemic and all the investment that has already gone in.

[Tom Hayes]

I have written more mental health investment standard funding applications than I care to remember. Although investment is obviously important, one major challenge with that stream of funding was that I had to apply on an annual basis. There was no certainty around multi-year settlements, so I was repeatedly setting up projects for which I could not find the funding to keep them going. That created more disruption in mental health support. We need to have stable, continuous funding settlements that actually meet the need that has been identified by the data and patient experience. That is what the Government are delivering, and to latch on to a particular funding stream and claim that somehow it is not being provided with support, when actually there is the wider of goal of tackling mental health through different methods—

China Spying Case

Debate between Tom Hayes and Luke Evans

Tuesday 28th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dr Evans]

I will not, because I have taken two interventions already. My worry is about what the public perceive, because it is a statement of fact that since the Chancellor went to China, decisions have been made about the Chagos islands, for example, or British Steel and £1 billion—what is going on there? A spy case has now been dropped, and there is the possibility of a super-embassy and even ID cards. My constituents are coming to me seeing a running theme.

[Tom Hayes]

When I hear the hon. Gentleman speak, I listen to what he is saying—I think he could be a very good replacement for the shadow Minister on the Front Bench. The question I want to ask, though, is this: what is his view on the relationship of the UK to China? Ought we to engage and, if so, on what terms, or should we be economically decoupling? What is his view about the nature of that relationship?

[Dr Evans]

To repeat the quote we heard earlier, we need to walk and chew gum at the same time. It is easy to call China a threat, but still to engage. That is exactly what the Chinese Government do to us: they say, “We’re embarrassed. We’re upset. You promised us something”, and we just say, “Oh, I’m terribly sorry about that.” We could stand up for ourselves and say what we think. Let us not forget that we are in a trade deficit with China; it is economically in China’s interest to be working with us, as much as it is in our interest to be working with China.

My worry, though, is that the public are joining dots. The Government will say that there are no dots to be joined, but the longer this goes on and the more incidents come out, it becomes harder to make that argument. That brings us full circle to where I started, because this is about transparency and releasing the documentation.