NHS Funding Bill — House of Commons, 2020-02-04
Topic: Health
Justin Piers Richard Madders (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I understand his frustration absolutely. I think he has a very fair point, Dame Rosie, that because of the Barnett consequentials there is a role for SNP Members—indeed, all Scottish and Welsh Members—in this debate. Clearly, that is a separate issue to the whole English votes for English laws process, but the fact is clear that on the face of the Bill there are Barnett consequentials, which mean that the devolved nations ought to have a say It is really no wonder, given the background I have just set out, that children are reaching a crisis point before getting the support they need, and that the number of children attending accident and emergency for their mental health in a situation of crisis is increasing year on year. That is not inevitable. With real investment, we could reverse the trend of long waits, rationed treatment and inadequate care if we allocated more of the NHS budget to mental health. As we know, mental health illnesses represent 23% of the total disease burden on the NHS, but just 11% of the NHS England budget. That is a long way off the parity of esteem that we all seek to achieve We know that the Government plan to put in an extra £2.3 billion a year by 2023-24, but that is not enough. The Institute for Public Policy Research has said that to achieve parity of esteem for mental health services, funding for those services needs to grow by 5.5% on average not just next year, but over the next decade. The NHS plans to spend £12.2 billion on mental health funding in 2019, but the IPPR estimates that that needs to reach 16.1 billion by 2023-24 alone Of course, we support the increased funding for mental health in the Bill, but we know the NHS has to live within the 3.3% uplift provided under the Bill. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Health Foundation, NHS providers, the British Medical Association and many of the royal colleges say that health expenditure should rise across the board by 3.4% just to maintain current standards of care. By definition, there will actually be less money for funding in other areas. That means there is a risk of further raids on the mental health budget. In previous years, money allocated to mental health services, particularly children and adolescent mental health services, has been diverted back to hospitals to deal with the crisis there Labour would have done what was desperately needed. We would have put in an extra £1.6 billion a year immediately into mental health services, ring-fenced mental health budgets and more than doubled spending on children’s mental health. That is why we are seeking to amend the Bill to ensure mental health services do not lose out because of other financial pressures in the system. We are calling on the Government to ensure that guarantees for mental health funding are protected by ring-fencing mental health funding. We also seek to require the Secretary of State to come to the House annually to report on the amounts and proportion of funding allocated to mental health services, and on their plans to achieve parity of esteem for mental health services On the Labour Benches we are not convinced that mental health is a priority for this Government, despite what they say. They may want to position themselves as the party of the NHS, but as long as they continue to neglect mental health and push services deeper into crisis, they will not come near that aim. We intend to push amendment 2 to a Division, because we want to hold the Government to account. We want transparency on mental health spending and we want a clear road map from the Secretary of State on how he intends to make parity of esteem a reality.