Baroness Barker (LD)

My Lords, in speaking to my Amendment 49A, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady May, for her amendments. Those of us on the joint scrutiny committee spent a lot of time focusing on the fact that, in truth, a lot of what happens to people who are having mental health crises depends entirely on where they are, who is there and who somebody passing in the street and tries to help them thinks is the right person to call at a moment of emergency. We are all in agreement that the police have for too long been the default answer to a problem but are not the right answer to a problem. The police know they are not the right answer to a problem—I say that as somebody who has lots of police officers in my family. A lot of people having a mental health crisis will end up in A&E just because the lights are on and that is where people go. We are still dealing with one of the problems the Wessely review touched upon, and that is lack of timely access to an accurate diagnosis. My amendment, which I admit was suggested by practitioners in the field, tries to deal with the fact that we do not have an abundance of consultant psychiatrists who are there at the drop of a hat to make assessments. The amendment probes whether we might help things by opening up the eligibility to make diagnoses under Section 12 to people who are health professionals but not necessarily medical practitioners. Back in 2006-07, we had the massive argument about bringing in approved mental health professionals. That was a big battle and there was a lot of rearguard action on the part of consultant psychiatrists, who saw it as a downgrading. Approved mental health practitioners are now very much part of our mental health services and they are a good part of our mental health services. The amendment is trying to open up the making of assessments, simply in order to speed up access to appropriate services. We all understand, and are talking about, the fact that, although we can see the effects of waiting lists and so on on physical health services, waiting lists and the lack of access to appropriate treatment in mental health services are much more hidden. People end up in limbo unless and until there is some kind of outrage, or, to go back to the noble Baroness’s point, until they do something sufficiently serious. We ought to be freeing up the capacity of consultant psychiatrists in particular, because not only is demand growing but there are also particular areas of specialist demand—young people with eating disorders, for example. I frequently hear of worried parents being told that their children are not sufficiently ill to get treatment. They are not alone; there are other people in that same situation. My modest amendment is an attempt to open up and make better use of the skills we have within the NHS workforce.