Kerry McCarthy
MP for Bristol East · Labour · United Kingdom
“We see that in four main ways: physical risks, including floods, wildfires, droughts and storms; transition risks as economies move away from high-carbon industries; nature-related risks affecting food production and natural resources; and systemic risks, where shocks spread rapidly across sectors and markets.”
“The glaciers of the third pole function as Asia’s water tower, feeding major river systems that support nearly 2 billion people. When rising temperatures accelerate glacial melt, the consequences extend far beyond the mountains.”
“Following the heatwaves and wildfires across Europe this summer and the destruction caused by the glacier collapse and catastrophic flooding in Nepal and Tibet, the message is becoming impossible to ignore: the consequences of climate change and environmental degradation are real, not some distant future threat.”
“Personally, I cannot see that Rosebank is compatible with meeting our climate objectives, but I recognise that the process should be followed. Green Alliance has reported that the gas being wasted in the North sea would be enough to heat 570,000 homes.”
“I too worked in the financial markets, although I think I have done a better job of hiding it in my 21 years in Parliament. I was more on the debt market side. In fact, I am so old that I was part of the salvage operation for Barings bank when it went under. That brings me to the right hon. Gentleman’s point about regulation.”
“My hon. Friend will not be surprised to hear that I very much agree with the point that he just made. We have some excellent, innovative businesses in Bristol that came up through the Science Creates innovation hubs and attracted private capital.”
The complete record
Every one of 6,322 lines we hold for Kerry McCarthy, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 25 of 127.
“Q In that case, again, if they are willing and wanting to be arrested and are not worried about the level of fines because payment will be crowdfunded, that suggests that it is not a deterrent. I am a Bristol MP, and we saw with the Colston statue and the Black Lives Matter protests that the jury acquitted four of the defendants of criminal damage. My concern is that the more unreasonable the legislation is seen to be, the more bases it covers and the more it cracks down on what many people view as legitimate public protest, the more likely we are to see jury acquittals. Do you share that concern? John Groves: We want the legislation to work so that it provides that deterrent. I do not think I can say any more than that.”
“For example, it could be driving somebody to a protest, or to shops selling paint or glue, if the person the glue is sold to subsequently glues themselves to something. Linked to that, there does not seem to be any requirement for the person to have had knowledge that the protest activities were going to cause serious disruption when they “caused or contributed” to the carrying out of those activities. That could capture a vast range of behaviour.”
“They can be imposed not necessarily on conviction, as you said. The orders can cover an incredibly broad range of circumstances. Under clause 13(2)(a)(v), all you need to prove is that on two separate occasions somebody “caused or contributed to the carrying out by any other person”— they do not even have to have done the act even themselves; it could be done by someone else— “activities related to a protest that resulted in, or were likely to result in, serious disruption”. You do not need to have carried out the “activities related to a protest”; you just have to have “caused or contributed” to them. Those are incredibly vague and broad terms; they could cover almost anything done to assist someone doing anything related to a protest.”
“Could they find themselves being subjected to this process just because they have been photographed at previous protests at which other people committed disruptive acts? To what extent is it a collective thing? Or would it have to be proved that an individual had done something? “Disruption” is such a vague term. What would a person have to have done for the police to be able to go down this route? I should probably ask the Minister, because I think the answer at the moment is that we do not really know, but how do you see this panning out? Stephanie Needleman: I cannot see if Martha and Ollie are indicating that they will answer, but I can kick off, if that is helpful. I think you have hit the nail on the head in raising the vagueness of when these serious disruption prevention orders can be imposed.”
“Q May I ask about the serious disruption prevention orders in clause 12? As I understand it, there could be an application to the court by the authorities to prevent somebody from taking part in protests, even if they had not been convicted of something but are deemed to have been involved in disruption. I did have further details, but I did not realise I would be called so quickly; I have given the general gist of my point. Do you have a clear idea of how much would have to be proved? If you are applying for an order on the basis that someone has been involved in something but they have never been convicted of it—let us assume they have not been taken to court and acquitted of it—I guess the idea is that they would be known to the police as having been involved in previous protests. How would you see that panning out?”
“The international standard allows individuals to be prevented from accessing a process, but the bar is very high. The Bill sets an extraordinarily low bar. There are two levels by which these orders can be put in place. One is based on a person having two previous convictions on the civil standard burden of proof; the other is not based on conviction at all, which is even worse. The UK is so far out of step with where it should be under international standards; it is quite alarming.”
“There are lots of layers to this before you even get to the detail of what happens if someone is subject to one of these orders, how they would shift it, and whether being subject to an order would mean that they could no longer protest. Olly Sprague: My colleagues have covered everything that I wanted to say on the domestic aspect. It is worth coming back to the question: where do the international standards sit? The United Nations Human Rights Committee’s general comment from 2020 is most useful here. It allows the criminalisation of individuals taking part in a demonstration only in very specific circumstances, and it sets the threshold at incitement to violence. It sets the time limit as “as short as possible”; it talks in terms of a few hours.”
“When thinking about all these definitions and new offences, it is important to recognise that significant paradigm shift in the concept of how you go about policing protest. Add to that the fact that these new concepts, including the idea of serious disruption, will be defined in secondary legislation. This significant interference with the fundamental right of protest may result in terms being defined by a politician who gives the definition very little parliamentary scrutiny. The measures would then be implemented by a police service that interprets them as it sees fit; we do not need to go into the times when they get it right and the times when they get it wrong.”
“You already have a human rights framework for limiting protest in certain constrained situations, but what we see in this Bill is not the language of crime, disorder, or abuse of others’ rights, but the language of disruption, inconvenience and nuisance. That is a significant, conceptual, legal change in the language. As Stephanie says, it takes you into the territory of criminalising what we have hitherto understood to be non-criminal conduct—of criminalising protest tactics that have a long history and previously would not have been considered criminal acts. People who may have participated in a couple of protests over five years may suddenly find themselves within the purview of the criminal law, although hitherto both criminal and human rights law would simply never have brought them into that space.”
“The Home Office was against bringing them in, on the grounds that they were neither compatible with human rights nor an effective deterrent that would solve the problem that they purported to. That relates to a slippage in principle and language that we see across the Bill. It is important to pay attention to it, because this is law; cases will be decided on these words. Article 10 of the European convention on human rights is of course not an absolute right. It can be interfered with. There is a balance to be struck between the interests of a protester and the interests of the wider community, for example. There are many grounds on which you can interfere with the right to protest; one of them is crime and disorder, and another is the rights of other people.”
“So yes, involvement would have to be proved, but given the vagueness and the broadness of the conditions, it is likely that it can be easily proved. Martha Spurrier: It is right that, for example, legal aid would not be available to someone defending themselves against having one of those orders imposed on them, and of course they can be renewed; there is a suggestion in the Bill that they could be renewed indefinitely. Once the order was in place, you would not get legal aid for a lawyer’s assistance in dislodging it. It is worth stepping back a little and looking at the serious disruption prevention orders. These have been proposed by the Met police before, under the name of protest banning orders.”
“Q How do you see the provisions working? As I understand it, an application has to be made to a court for the order. Would the person who was going to be subject to this order be entitled to legal representation? Would getting the order involve proving the person’s original involvement? Would they be able to challenge the fact that they were deemed to have been involved in supporting disruption on two previous occasions? Or would the police apply for the order and have it granted in absentia? Stephanie Needleman: It has to be proved, but it only has to be found, on the balance of probabilities—the civil standard of proof—that one of the conditions has been met. As I said, the conditions are so broad and vague that it should not be that problematic for the police to approve.”
“However, you cannot characterise a whole protest as violent just because some aspect of it was violent. With the way the serious disruption prevention orders are drafted, you could, in theory, be held responsible for an altogether peaceful protest where a violent action that was completely beyond your control took place. You cannot really be held responsible for something that you were not responsible for, if that makes sense.”
“I could understand it to a point if somebody’s presence at a future protest could lead to a dangerous situation, which is what you say the international comparison would be; but under the Bill, basically your right to protest could be removed for five years because you had not behaved impeccably on previous protests. Olly Sprague: The Bill would also potentially hold you responsible for the conduct of other people at a protest that you were organising. One of the great unfortunate misconceptions of protest, especially around violence and disruptive protest, is that a protest somehow gets characterised as being inherently violent because actions of violence occurred within it. It is perfectly legitimate for law enforcement officers to deal with and prevent those violent actions and make arrests.”
“Q I think the Amnesty note says that in other countries, the issue is about not being allowed to organise a protest, but this measure, as I understand it, would mean that you were not allowed to participate. It could be quite specific: you would not be allowed in a particular place at a particular time, or in a particular area when something was going on. Is that right? Olly Sprague: We have to be careful when making international comparisons. We do not really not compare and rank countries in some kind of league table. We look at each country individually and see where it marks up. It is interesting, though, that there are not that many examples around the world of measures akin to a protest banning order.”
“Q You say that in Belarus anyone who has been fined is not allowed to organise a protest for another year. This measure goes way beyond that. Olly Sprague: We have not looked at 600 different laws for the purpose of this sitting. However, where we have looked, we found corresponding powers of a similar nature in places such as Turkey, the Philippines, Belarus, Russia and Egypt, I think. In all the cases where they have a measure that is similar to a protest banning order, it has been on the organisation of protests, not the participation.”
“Q You would like to think that our civil liberties protections were a bit better than those in Belarus, but the ban there is only for a year, rather than five. Olly Sprague: Yes.”
“3. What steps he is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help ensure food security preparedness as part of his Department’s national resilience strategy.”
“This situation has become increasingly urgent because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has seriously disrupted global food supplies. Will the Minister comment on rumours that the Government are reportedly abandoning many of the recommendations in the national food strategy, on which their response is long overdue, including measures that would help us to improve our food security?”
“It is difficult to unpick all that, but Professor Louis Appleby has suggested some priority areas for the suicide prevention plan: where rates are high, such as among middle-aged men; where rates are rising, even if they are quite low, which relates to children and young people; where there is proximity to prevention, such as among current mental health patients; and where there is public concern, such as for university students. Professor Appleby also suggests, for political reasons, that the north should be a priority. That might also be because he is based at Manchester University and he is perhaps pushing his home turf, but as part of levelling up. Economic aspects such as poverty and unemployment can be big factors.”
“The Government are developing a national real-time suicide surveillance system, so perhaps the Minister will update us on progress with that. As the British Psychological Society has explained, suicidal behaviour cannot be understood from any one perspective alone. Suicidality is best explained as a complex interplay between risk factors across domains. Not everyone who experiences bereavement or relationship breakdown, or who is under massive pressure at work or is struggling financially, will feel suicidal. There is often an accumulation of pressures and events, sometimes stretching back to adverse childhood experiences and exacerbated by adult trauma, although sometimes it is just that something bad has happened.”
“The latest coroners’ statistics show that deaths by suicide are at a record high, and it is obvious that the Government have not met their target of reducing suicide by 10%. Clearly, a better strategy is needed. I accept that setting any kind of target is complex. We saw a spike in suicides after the 2008 financial crash; we are now emerging from a pandemic that has taken a terrible toll on people’s mental health and the cost of living crisis is starting to bite. A lot of factors are not in the Minister’s control, but as is often said, what is measured is what gets done, so there has to be something to aim for. To help us to get there, several organisations have raised with me the need for real-time data.”
“I am a little concerned that the issue is being bundled up within the one consultation and that there are only passing references to suicide in the consultation overview, which is what most people will read. In fact, suicide is not mentioned at all in the chapter on crisis, which is where I would most expect to find it, and people have to go to the mental health and wellbeing plan discussion paper to find any detail. I hope that that does not mean that suicide is being treated as an afterthought. We are told that the details of the suicide prevention plan will be set out in due course, but given that suicidality is recognised by the Government as needing its own separate strategy, I do not understand why it does not warrant its own consultation.”
“At the event, we also heard from Simon Gunning, chief executive officer of Campaign Against Living Miserably, or CALM, whom I thank for meeting me yesterday in advance of the debate. I also thank Mr Speaker, who spoke movingly about his daughter’s suicide and the recent loss of his brother-in-law. We also heard from the leader of the Labour party and the Minister. I thank the Minister for speaking at the event, but I hope she will forgive me for seizing the opportunity of securing today’s debate to press her further on some of the issues we discussed then. It is good to talk, but it is even better to see action. I am sure the Minister will remind us that the Government are consulting on their 10-year mental health plan, which will also be used to inform a refreshed national suicide prevention plan—the previous one is 10 years old.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered Government action on suicide prevention. As always, it is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Bone. Three weeks ago today, I hosted an event on mental health and suicide prevention in Speaker’s House. We heard from two members of the band Joy Division/New Order because the event took place on the 42nd anniversary of the death by suicide of the singer, Ian Curtis. I want to take this opportunity to thank Stephen and Bernard from the band for coming along, because if it had been just me speaking about this subject, not as many people would have listened, although I am sure a mass audience is hanging on to my every word today.”
“Some might come from abusive family backgrounds and their parents would not be helpful or supportive, but in many cases the parents would have desperately wanted to know that their child was struggling to the extent that they were. Steve Mallen from the Zero Suicide Alliance thinks that more could be done within data protection laws to protect students, and I hope that that is under active consideration.”
“Rather than trying to force all young people into one model of what success and achievement look like, institutions need to adapt to them. I hope that Natasha’s parents will be able to pursue their campaign to ensure that that happens in the future. I have also spoken to various groups about data sharing, which I appreciate is a complicated area. When should parents of university students, who are adults, after all, be informed? What are the boundaries of patient confidentiality? Some students might be deterred from speaking to mental health services at uni if they think that their parents might be told, particularly if they are grappling with something like their sexuality or if they have become involved with drugs. There are all sorts of things that young people would not want their parents to know about.”
“Just because a child does well in education does not mean that they are set up for success in the wider world, whether that means higher education or the world of work. I am sad to say, as a Bristol MP, that Bristol University has become known for the number of student suicides in recent years. It is obviously not the only university to have experienced this, but it has come to particular attention. There needs to be a constant process of reflection and review. We have just had the court ruling in the tragic case of Natasha Abrahart. She was a very able student at Bristol University, but she suffered terribly from social anxiety and just could not handle the oral side of her course and having to do presentations.”
“This consultation is all wrapped up in a 10-year plan, but we need a 10-day plan. We need action now. One issue we discussed at the event in Speaker’s House was how schools could better nurture children’s creativity and give them an outlet for their emotions through music and art. We also talked about whether the current trajectory of education, with schools very focused on grades—someone described them as “exam factories”—places undue pressure on children. I agree with that to a large extent and worry about cuts to things like music education, which mean that creatively inclined children do not have that outlet. It is not plain sailing for the other 50%, the academic ones, either.”
“These are children at the more severe end of the spectrum—those who presented with suicidal thoughts, self-harming or eating disorders. The number of attendances at A&E by young people with a diagnosed psychiatric condition has tripled since 2010. We know that CAMHS is at breaking point. There are huge waiting lists, and severely mentally ill children are being cared for in inappropriate settings or being sent hundreds of miles away from home for treatment. It is said that half of all mental health problems are established by the age of 14, rising to 75% by the age of 24. If we do not want today’s children to be tomorrow’s suicide statistics, we need to do much more, much faster, to help them now, and I just do not see that sense of urgency from the Government.”
“It is meant to be a joint effort by the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care—there is a joint foreword—but there is very little in it on child and adolescent mental health services. Given the overlap between children struggling at school who cannot get the right diagnosis and cannot get a timely education, health and care plan and children who end up in the mental health system, joint working is really important. Obviously, it is not just children with SEND who struggle. One in six children are now said to have a probable mental health condition, up from one in nine in 2017. More than 400,000 under-18s were referred for specialist mental health care between April and October last year.”
“I gather there is a bit of a difference of opinion between the two Departments, which is particularly disappointing given that the current Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the right hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries), was the first Minister for Suicide Prevention. Does the Minister agree that we need to strengthen the Bill’s provisions on this issue, or has she lost the battle with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care? I hope not, and I hope that, if the Bill is not strengthened in Committee, we can improve it on Report. The review of special educational needs and disability is another potential missed opportunity.”
“One organisation described the current approach as very much a “throw everything at the wall and hope something sticks” approach. We need a far more tailored approach. Will the Minister also tell us where the boundary falls between what is in the remit of the Department of Health and Social Care and work that requires action by other Departments? We have already talked about gambling, and the debate yesterday was answered by the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston). The Online Safety Bill is another example of where another Department is taking the lead, and I am worried that the Government will not fully seize that opportunity to crack down on sites promoting suicide and self-harm.”
“For example, the British Transport Police is very good in terms of how it polices stations and watches out for signs that somebody might be thinking of jumping in front of a train, and helplines can be flagged up at places such as the Humber bridge and the Clifton suspension bridge, but there are also physical measures that would make suicide more difficult. People might say, “Well, perhaps people will just go somewhere else,” but it does not always happen like that. If the moment is lost, there is a good chance a life will be saved. Will the Minister tell us a little bit about the plans for the revised suicide prevention plan? Will it have clear priorities, with an evidence-based, tailored plan in each case for how we will bring rates down, and then targets set on that basis?”
“I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I know there was a very good debate in this Chamber yesterday morning, which unfortunately I could not attend, where such issues were raised. There are some discrete areas where a specific intervention suggests itself, such as gambling addiction, alcohol abuse, post-natal depression, or veterans’ mental health. I certainly feel that such risk factors ought to be reflected in the suicide prevention plan. A quick win would be to obstruct people from accessing the means to die by suicide, with obstacles placed in their way. A lot of suicides are opportunistic.”
“He suffered from depression for a long time, and he has this song, “Nights That Won’t Happen”, which says, “The dead know what they’re doing when they leave this world behind… When the dying’s finally done and the suffering subsides All the suffering gets done by the ones we leave behind.” I will finish on that note, because that is very true. He felt that he was escaping from something. He escaped from it, but I hope that support services for people who have recently been bereaved by suicide is at the top of the Minister’s agenda, because those are the people who really need it.”
“I want to finish today by paying tribute to people who have spoken up about their own family experiences, as Mr Speaker did at the event in Parliament. He spoke so powerfully, because he was clearly very upset about what had happened. I, too, lost someone to suicide last year, as many other people will have, including people who are listening today. I started off by talking about how Bernard and Stephen from Joy Division/New Order came to speak about how, even 42 years later, they are still affected by the death of their singer Ian Curtis. Another musical genius and a musical hero of mine, David Berman, took his own life a few years ago. His last album, “Purple Mountains”, was basically a suicide note. He can be very funny at times—he has this real lyrical genius—but listening back to the album now, you can see where he is going.”
“Those comments are usually directed at a hospital trust or another organisation, but I would like to know what notice the Government take. Patterns showing where there are failings in the system emerge in these reports. I would be reassured if I felt that, rather than just informing the actions of an individual institution, the reports also informed future suicide-prevention strategy. I am sure the Minister will tell us how much more is being devoted to mental health spending, but we need to acknowledge the simple fact that, despite any figures she might produce today, our mental health services are drastically underfunded, under-resourced and under-staffed, which is why they are at crisis point.”
“In January this year, the inquest jury returned a narrative conclusion, having found that multiple failings contributed to her death. The prevention of future deaths reports—the regulation 28 reports—published with the latest coroners’ statistics, make very grim reading. So many of the reports point to failings such as those noted in Zoe Wilson’s case. I am not convinced that lessons will be learned from these reports, because what is required in many cases is not actions by individual hospital trusts. I should explain what happens. The coroner notes that an institution—a university, or any organisation that might have had contact with the person prior to their death—should learn a lesson and do something in future to try to save a life.”
“Those were not people with what might be called run-of-the-mill mental health concerns; they had major psychotic illnesses or chronic personality disorders. They needed to be in hospital, not in prison, but they did not get those transfers. We can only speculate on the problems that might store up for the future. Where there are hospital beds, the pressures on the wards and staff are immense. There are way too many tragic stories of patients being discharged too soon, being wrongly assessed as low risk, and not getting the help they needed, with inevitable results. For example, 22-year-old Zoe Wilson died at Callington Road hospital in my constituency in 2019. She was put on a low-risk ward, despite ongoing psychosis.”
“Figures obtained through freedom of information requests show that on a single day in February this year, all of England’s high and medium-security hospitals were operating above the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ maximum bed occupancy rate of 85%. The NHS pays £2 billion a year to private hospitals for mental health beds because it does not have enough of its own. Nine out of 10 mental health beds run by private operators are occupied by NHS patients. It was also revealed last month, again through FOI requests, that over a five-year period from 2016 to 2021, more than half of the 5,403 prisoners in England assessed by prison-based psychiatrists as requiring hospitalisation were not transferred from prison to hospital.”
“If people have physical health problems, the expectation is that the health service is there to treat them. I know there is a question of capacity and whether people consent to treatment, but I feel we write people off when their mental health reaches a certain state, unless it gets so bad that they are a danger to themselves or others. The system needs to gear up to help people who are broken to that extent. It might not be possible to fix them, but their lives could be made better. The number of beds in NHS mental health hospitals has fallen by a quarter since 2010, with almost 6,000 beds lost in England alone, despite big increases in the number of people needing mental health support, and cases where people are sectioned under the Mental Health Act.”
“We have waited a long time for the Government to bring forward the mental health reforms outlined in the Queen’s Speech. We are right to be concerned about the misuse of powers under the Mental Health Act 1983. We have heard terrible stories of people with autism being detained long term against their will, and the disproportionate use of those powers against people from ethnic minority backgrounds, particularly young black men. I hope that, as part of that debate, we can also talk about how the system fails people who do need to be in hospital, whether by voluntary admission or being sectioned, because a lot of people would benefit. We see people on the streets talking to themselves, heads bowed, and everybody side-steps them. Sitting on public transport next to someone who is clearly unwell can be uncomfortable.”
“Too many people fall by the wayside because the right pathway is not available. Currently, 40% of patients waiting for mental health treatment are forced to contact emergency or crisis services before they receive treatment. One in 10 of them ends up in A&E, and I have real concerns about whether A&E is appropriate, particularly if someone has experienced psychotic episodes. I cannot think of anything worse for them than being in an A&E department, with the sirens, flashing lights and people who have probably turned up there because they have drunk far too much or are off their heads on something or other and have got into fights on a Saturday night. Some hospital trusts are experimenting with trying to triage people very quickly away to mental health provision in A&E, which I think is a very good move.”
“I am a bit worried because there is a danger that we will focus totally on the softer end of things and talk a lot less about the more difficult areas, where people are well past the point where a nice cup of tea and a friendly chat would make a difference. At the moment, there certainly seems to be a huge problem where people are considered to be past the point where talking therapies would help. It might be that they are too high risk or too unwell to benefit from primary mental health services but not quite ill enough to access secondary services, such as the community mental health teams; they are not totally at crisis point. Often, they are left to fester somewhere in the middle, and when they reach crisis point, they finally get help, but that is too late in many cases to actually turn their mental health around.”
“I thank my hon. Friend and agree with him, but I have some reservations about going down that path. A lot of the conversation about mental health in recent years has focused on the importance of getting people to open up and talk about their problems, and an obstacle in the way of doing that is that it can be very difficult for people to access GP appointments or to get the help that they need. I very much support Labour’s policy of publicly accessible mental health hubs in every community, as well as mental health support in every school. There needs to be swift and easy access to talking therapies or even to something less formal—just to someone who will sit there and be prepared to talk to the person. There is also campaigning to try to get people just to ask others how they are feeling, and that would help.”
“In the case of my friend Ric, we learned at the inquest last week that he had phoned a mental health crisis helpline. In that conversation, he revealed that he was in the middle of a psychotic episode. When he later went to A&E at the suggestion of the helpline and spoke to a mental health nurse, he did not reveal that. In the prevention of future deaths report, the inquest recorded that there should have been real-time updating of his medical records, because the people at the hospital would not have let him leave A&E that night if they had realised that part of the problem was psychosis. I talked about taking note of what is said at inquests, and I hope that we can pick up the recommendation on real-time updating.”
“I think I have just about time to thank everybody for coming, and I hope that this debate continues. I am sure that it will. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered Government action on suicide prevention.”
“A recent report showed that thousands of severely mentally ill prisoners who had been assessed as requiring hospitalisation were not being transferred because of the shortage of NHS beds, or they were facing long delays. Does the Secretary of State agree with the director of the Prison Reform Trust who said that this guarantees that “people will leave prison in a worst state than when they came in, with every likelihood that the behaviour that originally led to their arrest and conviction will continue”?”
“I have looked at the section in the report on children’s mental health, which is okay as far as it goes, but we know that child and adolescent mental health services are in absolute crisis. Figures were released yesterday that show that more children than ever are presenting with mental health problems, and many of them will not get the help that they need. Children in care can carry trauma with them their whole life if they are not helped. How will the Minister work with his colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care to make sure that there is not a silo, and that he is not just looking at the aspects of mental health for which he bears responsibility? I am trying to avoid the phrase “joined-up working”, but genuine joined-up working is what we need.”