Debate on the Address — House of Commons, 2019-10-14
Topic: Health
Paul Christopher Blomfield (Labour, Centre-left): I very much agree with my hon. Friend, and I shall return to that point later in my comments On health, I was told about the difficulties in securing timely appointments with GPs, sometimes acute difficulties with waiting times in A&E, and difficulties in accessing other services. Young people told me about the pressures that are contributing to the rise in mental health problems, on which the system is failing them badly. Schools told me that they were dipping into teaching budgets to provide support for students in mental health crises. Teaching budgets are there for teaching, but that money has been diverted to cover the crisis in young people’s mental health. We need even more support and substantial investment in child and adolescent mental health services. Young people told me that waiting times of 25 weeks between first diagnosis and a referral to the first opportunity for help are the norm, not the exception, but early intervention is critical to tackling mental health crises Parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities told me heartbreaking stories of their struggle to get education, health and care plans that met their children’s needs. Parents also talked about the challenges that schools face in delivering the plans once they are in place because of the lack of resources. We know that our schools have been hit by an 8% real-terms budget cut, but the particular failure to address special educational needs and disability funding is causing an enormous crisis. Young people were increasingly worried about crime, talking about knife crime in particular. They made the case for the out-of-school activities that used to be common before the cuts, which have had a disproportionate impact on our local authorities and have led to a collapse in youth services. In other meetings, people highlighted how we miss Sure Start and the difference that the centres made in supporting families during the crucial early years. They talked about how school exclusions, driven by the lack of resources to support the most difficult children, are feeding gangs with recruits and sucking young people into knife crime A big worry across all ages and among all parts of the community was the rise in homelessness, rough sleeping and street begging. At a meeting on housing, we talked about the rising number of people in temporary accommodation without a permanent home of their own, the rise in sofa surfing, and the increasing dependency on friends and relatives for accommodation. People were clear that the only solution is a concerted programme of building affordable social housing. The problem of rough sleeping and street begging is clearly more complex, and we talked about mental health and alcohol and drug dependency problems that need intensive interventions to support people into getting off the streets and rebuilding their lives. There was a huge willingness from people in statutory services and the voluntary sector to resolve such problems, but there was also a real sense that the problems had risen over the past nine years as a consequence of the cuts that had affected statutory services’ ability to support and work with the voluntary sector in a way that has a real impact Those are all different issues, but there is a common theme. Nine years of cuts have sapped the capacity of our public services and much of the voluntary sector to meet the needs of those who need them most. Austerity has corroded the quality of too many lives, but it did not have to be like that. Such decisions were not forced by necessity, but by political choice, and those choices need to change. The Gracious Speech offers a few convenient headlines, but there is no real recognition of the scale of the change that we need: the fundamental new direction for our country that my constituents spoke about and which this Government clearly cannot provide.