My Lords, if the role of your Lordships’ House is to improve the Bill, I feel that this set of amendments will achieve this. I am grateful to the Minister and his officials for responding to the points which were made so powerfully in Committee and in meetings outside this Chamber. The range of amendments will take us further.
The Minister talked about the introduction of transparency and accountability, which are key in the efforts to improve the provision of mental health services. However, of course, improving transparency and accountability is not an end in itself; it is purely a way of getting us to the right place. What will be important is what this delivers. A step along the way to improving mental health services is definitely being made, but there is an awful lot more to do. For example, the Centre for Mental Health estimates that some 10 million additional people, and that includes 1.5 million children and young people, will need mental health care as a result of the pandemic. It would of interest to understand a little more about how the Government intend to make progress on this once the Bill receives Royal Assent. Will we see a recovery plan in the area of mental health services, backed by a long-term workforce plan, something which we will return to later?
On the policy to bring practice into line with aspiration, and on the funding for and redoubling of effort towards achieving parity, while we are talking about this on a national level, it would also be helpful for the Minister to clarify that it applies to all areas of the Bill’s implementation and that the new bodies set up by the Bill will be expected to treat mental health equally from the outset. For example, it would mean ensuring that the decisions about resource allocation, capital spending, waiting times and priorities were all taken on the basis that mental health must be valued equally with physical health.
The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, was right to point out that we do not start in a neutral position, because we know that waiting times are considerable, standards of services need massively to be improved and the workforce needs to be strengthened in order to deliver those services. It is therefore extremely important that the Minister in putting forward these amendments undertakes to see the job through, so that we do not just have transparency and accountability for their own sake but we deliver for the many millions who will rely on those services.