Lib Dems highlight plight of mental health services with House of Commons debate

Government spending cuts to mental health services, made despite mental illness affecting one in six adults in the UK, are being highlighted by the Liberal Democrats in the House of Commons today. Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary, Norman Lamb MP, who will be leading today's opposition day debate, said:

"Mental health remains a Cinderella service. It does not get the attention it deserves.

"We now have a crazy situation where a million people are on incapacity benefit as a result of mental health problems yet we the government is not implementing NICE guidelines to make talking therapies available. Evidence suggests this could lift half of those suffering out of depression and anxiety."

The full motion proposed by Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Menzies Campbell, reads as follows:

That this House is concerned that despite mental illness affecting one in six adults in the UK the proportion of NHS spending allocated to mental health has decreased in the last 10 years, despite the growing burden on the disability benefit system and criminal justice system of dealing with mental illness;

recognises that historic under-funding of mental health services has been exacerbated by the Government's top-slicing of budgets in order to bring the NHS out of deficit;

notes the damaging impact that this has had on providing access to mental health services, with particular regard to the unacceptably poor state of many acute mental health wards in providing appropriate settings for the treatment of children and young people, addressing the race inequalities in the mental health system and improving patient safety through, for example, the eradication of mixed sex wards;

further notes the warning in last year's Health Select Committee Report on NHS deficits that cuts in mental health services are simply unacceptable;

calls on the Government to deliver on its promise to ensure that trusts whose budgets were top-sliced in the last financial year will get their money back this year and to take active steps to ensure that within each health economy mental health trusts receive their fair allocation of funding; and

further urges the Government to accelerate its implementation of Lord Layard's report, which says that expanding therapy services could be paid for by the savings this would create for expenditure on benefits.