Jack Abbott

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. I thank the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Marie Goldman) for securing this important debate. Too many communities have paid a price for the failure of NHS trusts. In Ipswich, we know that all too well. Two trusts serve my community: East Suffolk and North Essex foundation trust, which provides our acute hospital services, and Norfolk and Suffolk NHS foundation trust, which is responsible for our mental health services. Unfortunately, both, but particularly the latter, have a history of patients enduring long waits, inconsistent standards of care and services that fall well short of what patients have every right to expect. Families were sidelined, and concerns went unanswered. For many years, NSFT has been synonymous with failure. In 2015, it was the first mental health trust in the country to enter special measures, and it was later put into an NHS recovery support programme. Two years ago, I stood in this very room and described NSFT as “arguably…the worst performing mental health trust in the…country.”—[Official Report, 10 October 2024; Vol. 754, c. 177WH.] That judgment reflected a litany of failings stretching back many years. It is important to acknowledge that genuine progress has been made. The picture today is markedly different from the one even just a few years ago. The number of patients waiting more than 18 weeks has fallen by over 80%, crisis services have improved, and more than 95% of patients experiencing a first episode of psychosis now begin treatment within two weeks of referral, which represents outperformance of the national standard. Although the trust is still rated “Requires improvement” overall, several services are now rated “Good”. That is testament in part to the leadership of NSFT, which brought stability to the trust after years of disruption. I am grateful to be hosting a quarterly meeting between NSFT and MPs in the region to ensure that progress is made. We can learn from the problems at the trust that improvement is possible even in the organisations with the most difficult legacies. However, we must not confuse progress with success; this is a first step and the beginning of a recovery that has a way to go. The Government’s reforms are finally starting to turn the page of years of failure. We have invested record-breaking amounts in our health service, reducing waiting lists, cutting ambulance response times in my area and expanding our workforce, so we should be tentatively hopeful. Neither NSFT nor ESNEFT, which I would talk about if I had more time, are yet where patients deserve and need them to be, but there are reasons to be optimistic. I make a plea to the Minister to ensure that we are fully funding mental health, as it desperately needs to be. Our trust never recovered from brutal cuts in 2014 and massive redesigns. We are on the path to recovery. We now have stability, and I recognise the progress made so far, but we must build on it and maintain a relentless focus on delivering the improvements that all our local patients deserve.