Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)

It is funny how these amendment groupings work, is it not? I will speak to my Amendment 50 and say a few comments on Amendment 59 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, to which my name is attached. We have talked a lot throughout the passage of this Bill, and rightly so, about the importance of how it is implemented and in particular about ensuring that sufficient resources are available to allow a much-needed expansion of community mental health services. To be blunt, unless this happens, the Bill just will not be implemented. To put this into context, those waiting the longest for elective community mental health care—both adults and children—have waited two years, which is twice as long as those waiting for elective physical health care. Parity is still a long way off. I was very grateful to the Minister for sharing the Government’s implementation plan and for arranging a helpful discussion with her and officials. My Amendment 50 would require integrated care boards to produce a biennial report assessing workforce sufficiency, identifying shortages and producing measures to address workforce challenges in delivering these services. We all understand that it will take time to enact the Bill’s provisions and that systems will take time to build capacity, including training of an expanded work- force—particularly given existing workforce challenges. In Committee, I talked about the workforce impacts of the Bill, drawing on figures and research from the Royal College of Psychiatrists. I will not repeat those figures, save to say that NHS England set a target back in 2016 to have more than 1,040 consultant psychiatrists in post in England by last year. Based on these targets, as of last year, there was still a shortfall of 769, so we still have a long way to go. Of course, the mental health workforce goes considerably wider than consultants. I turn to Amendment 59 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, to which I have added my name and which we very strongly support on these Benches. This amendment would ensure that mental health funding is not cut as a share of overall health service funding until this Bill is fully implemented. Indeed, it is vital, given the pressures on public finances, including on the overall health system and the pressures that they pose to mental health spending. Critically, the amendment would not tie the Government’s hands in whatever decisions they make about the overall level of NHS spending. One reason why I support this so strongly is because the Written Statement from the Secretary of State on 27 March on the amount and share of spend on mental health was, frankly, not reassuring, with mental health spending expected to go down as a proportion of overall NHS spend this year and a forecast for similar next year. I know that it was small amounts, but this could be part of a trend. It just reinforces the point that mental health spending and parity of esteem are not currently sufficiently protected, which I believe underlines the need for legislative cover. Therefore, if the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, is minded to test the opinion of the House, we will certainly support him.