Dr Danny Chambers

Thank you, Mr Dowd, for calling me to speak. As a veterinary surgeon, I come from a profession that has a suicide rate four times the national average. Like many people in this Chamber, I have experienced the pain of losing friends and colleagues to suicide. That led me to become a trustee of a mental health charity for several years, and I am honoured to be the spokesperson on mental health for the Liberal Democrats. Although we have undoubtedly focused on NHS clinical services in this debate, we often underestimate the profound impact that non-medical issues, such as living in poverty, financial worries, debt and insecure housing, can have on mental health and how they can hinder people’s recovery from a mental health crisis. I am incredibly proud of a project that I visited just last week in my constituency of Winchester that is run by Melbury Lodge mental health hospital and the citizens advice bureau in Westminster. This project provides one-to-one advice and support to in-patients on matters relating to living in the community, from relationship and financial advice to management of debt and benefits and housing problems. Someone who ends up being admitted to a mental health unit will find that their post—correspondence relating to their benefits, mortgages and other bills—all goes to their home address, and if nobody else lives there, they will not receive any of it. When they are discharged, they may get out and find that there is a problem with their benefits, or that they have received a huge bill that they were not expecting. Amazingly, the Melbury Lodge and Citizens Advice team have demonstrated that for every £1 spent on this project, the NHS system avoids spending on average £14.06, which is a huge return on investment. As we extrapolate out, the research shows that having the Citizens Advice service on site means that Melbury Lodge has avoided spending nearly a quarter of a million pounds. This cost avoidance is achieved through shorter in-patient stays, fewer readmissions, reduced medication and better engagement with community services. That is a staggering amount of money that can now be spent directly on clinical care. I urge the Government to look at the results of this initiative with a view to rolling it out in other parts of the country, because it is good for patients, good for NHS staff and good for the taxpayer. I am really excited that this project has been shortlisted for an NHS parliamentary award next week, and I look forward to supporting the team in person. We need to acknowledge the impact that the lack of mental healthcare has on other public services. When I go out with the police in Winchester, they tell me that they spend between 40% and 50% of their time dealing with mental health issues in some capacity. The hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Helena Dollimore) mentioned the cost when people in a mental health crisis, who are often already on a mental health waiting list, arrive at accident and emergency departments. One of the biggest issues raised with me by parents in Winchester is the huge delay for children who are waiting for diagnoses of ADHD and autism. The hon. Member for Ashford (Sojan Joseph) has already mentioned that the Darzi report acknowledged that 20% of the NHS disease burden is due to mental health issues.