Charles Walker calls for more compassion and focus on the care, safety and well-being of mental health patients.

9.40 pm Mr. Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con): I am afraid that I will not be able to do the subject justice, because we have heard excellent speeches from the hon. Members for Rhondda (Chris
Bryant) and for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams) and from my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (John Bercow). However, I shall try my best.

Ever since I came to this place, I have taken an interest in mental illness. We all have our own reasons for pursuing such an interest, but I am always touched and humbled by those people who come up to me and thank me in a quiet way for being their voice and for raising their concerns. Very often, people with mental illness feel marginalised and feel that there is no one out there listening to them.

That was brought home to me when I visited an outreach centre in Cheshunt where, after a roundtable discussion, the director of the centre said that one of the patients would like to have a word with me in private. I went into a room and met a gentleman who suffered from schizophrenia. He wanted to educate me about the illness. I was moved by the conversation, he did not need to validate himself to me, because he said that if someone had cancer or heart disease it would not define them. They would still be Charles with cancer or with heart disease, but he was all too often referred to as schizophrenic. I thought that that was very upsetting.

Mental illness makes many MPs feel a little uncomfortable. I have heard Members talk in the Chamber about personal experiences, but I think that I am right in saying that never in the history of Parliament has a sitting MP admitted to having a mental health problem. That was touched on by the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie). I often wonder why there is a reluctance to come forward.

Many MPs who want to discuss a personal issue must pause for thought and perhaps the following things might occur to them. They might think that mental illness is perceived in our society as a huge weakness.
They might wonder how their association would react. "Would it throw a supporting arm around me or would it move to deselect me? How would my children fare in the playground if I, as an MP, admitted to having a mental illness? Would they be teased or possibly even worse? How would the local and national press react? How would my constituents react?
What would be the response from my colleagues in this place?" All these factors might weigh on an MP before they discuss a personal issue.

We understand that mental illness does not sell well on the doorstep.
If we were talking about heart disease or cancer, the Chamber would be much fuller. I am sure that there are MPs who, in their hearts, would like to be here speaking up for the mentally ill against what might become a fairly oppressive piece of legislation. However, they are risk-averse. What would happen if they had the courage to speak up and one of those isolated tragedies occurred in their constituency? Would they be pilloried by the local press for supporting "loonies and nutters?" Those are not my words, but they are words that are used far too often by the media to describe sick people who deserve our compassion.

Mrs. Moon: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the fact that we have a ten-minute rule on speeches in this debate and that so many MPs have spoken with passion indicates the huge amount of support and interest in this House for people with mental illness? I am concerned that the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that that interest is not there. I believe that it is, as has been demonstrated by tonight's debate.

Mr. Walker: I have paid fulsome tribute to the speeches of Members this evening but my views are little different from those of the hon. Lady and I hope she will accept that.

I am concerned that we may be deliberately, or mistakenly, pandering to the tabloid press and validating some its more screaming headlines.
I did some research; the Daily Mail had the headline

"Knife maniac freed to kill...Mental patient ran amok in the park",

while The Sun had

"Violent, mad. So docs set him free. New community care scandal."

They are appalling misrepresentations of people with mental illness, and it does our media a great disservice that they persist in bringing them forward. However, I believe that we live in a civilised society and that our Government will in their heart not want to regulate in this area to satisfy the tabloid press.

The media reporting of mental illness is shameful. The Royal College of Psychiatrists has stated:

"The media's obsession with reporting cases of mental health patients who become violent has seriously distorted the truth. Mental health is not a predictor of violence against others for almost all diagnosis".

It continues:

"There is a slightly higher risk of violence with a diagnosis of schizophrenia but this is insignificant compared with the relationship between other conditions and violence, alcohol consumption being the main one."

Before I leave the subject of the press, I wish to say that it is unacceptable at a time when we have consigned phrases such as "cripple" and "retard" to the scrapheap that many of our leader writers still think that it is legitimate to use words such as "nutter" and "loony". Much of the media's reporting can be put down to laziness and avarice to keep their circulation up.

Recent research by the Glasgow University Media Group into the attitudes of senior production staff to the reporting of mental illness resulted in the following conclusions' unsurprisingly:

"News and features emphasise the newsworthy rather than the worthy.
Stereotypes are therefore enormously useful and they short circuit the need to spend time understanding a topic. They simply follow a rapid tried and tested formula which is known to work commercially."

Commenting on the research, Graham Thornicroft, head of the health service research department at the Institute of Psychology said:

"This is consistent with the tendency for people with mental illness, when not shown as violent predators, to be allocated to the category of helpless victim."

One of the tragedies of the Bill proposed by the Government is that there was not much compassion in it. There is a lack of willingness to challenge some of the distortions of mental illness peddled and promoted by the media. I have a great deal of time for the Minister "I have met her privately on a couple of occasions to discuss my concerns about mental health problems in my constituency" but in her ministerial press release of 1 March, after the Lords amendments were passed, she mentioned public protection no fewer than six times.
What she mentioned was public protection not the interests of the patient, but the interests of the public. Public protection is a consideration, but it should not overshadow the main purpose of any mental health legislation, which is the care, safety and well-being of patients.

Let me give a further quote from the Royal College of Psychiatrists:

"The law should seek to reduce stigma and discrimination against people with mental illness. Wherever possible the principles governing mental health care should be the same as those which govern physical care enabling people to feel able to seek help early, to ask about their fears and difficulties, without fearing scorn, humiliation or loss of status, freedom, job and friends is the best way to bring about improvement in their health."

I will not dwell on statistics, but it is worth pointing out that people in this country are almost four times more likely to be killed in a motor traffic accident than to be murdered and 80 times more likely to be killed in a motor traffic accident than to be killed by someone suffering from schizophrenia. In our tolerant society, we cannot live without risk and still call our society free. With the best intentions in the world, the Government cannot legislate to create a risk-free society.

It appears that a different set of rules apply to the mentally ill, that the normal rules relating to limiting civil liberties and rights are suspended. Let us imagine what would be the outcome if we were to follow the advice offered in an article in The Daily Telegraph today. The article is entitled:

"MPs should vote to save innocent lives".

It is written by Philip Johnston, who writes:

"If this Bill will save lives, then Parliament has a duty to support it."

I can think of a couple of Bills "unattractive Bills" that might save lives, and which might have been brought forward in a less enlightened time, such as 30 or 40 years ago. We could introduce a Bill to ensure that people with AIDS are locked up so that they do not pose a public risk. That would be unattractive, but I am sure that it would save a few lives. We could go out and round up young black males in Peckham, which might save a few lives in that area, but that is an unattractive and unpalatable solution. So why is it that when we discuss mental health we too often separate sufferers from everyone else to whom we accord rights?

Things have improved for those suffering from mental illness and I would not be churlish enough to deny that, but the Bill is the acid test, because it deals with some difficult issues. Of course people who pose a danger to others should be given treatment and looked after. But 79 members of the Mental Health Alliance would not be supporting the Lords amendments or opposing the Government's original drafting if the Bill would not massively extend the scope of the existing provisions to people who for good reasons should not be covered by the new legislation. I cannot believe that the 79 members of the MHA have got it wrong, or that the BMA and the Institute of Psychiatry have got it wrong, but the Government have got it right.
Surely the Government must recognise that when they are in a minority of one it is time to look at the issue again. The MHA is purely dedicated to looking after the interests of those who suffer from mental illness and I take their advice very seriously.

9.16 pm

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