In December 2024, Parliament announced a new inquiry to examine the state of community mental health services (CMHS).
The inquiry is currently accepting written evidence, the deadline for which is February 4th, 2025. We are working on our own submission, and will publish it when it is complete. The purpose of this article is to explain what the committee is, the purpose of the inquiry, and to offer support on submitting evidence.
The inquiry is led by the Health and Social Care Select Committee; one of many select committees through which Parliament can hold the Government to account.
The difference between Parliament and government
Parliament is made up of two Houses. The House of Commons (made up of elected Members of Parliament; one for each of the UK’s 650 constituencies), and The House of Lords (unelected members; some people have inherited their titles, and others have been appointed via various internal routes). These two houses are collectively called Parliament; they work together to create legislation (laws), debate important issues, and check the work of government.
The Government (sometimes known as the Executive) consists of the Prime Minister, their cabinet, junior Ministers, and civil servants. The leader of the winning party at a general election is appointed as Prime Minister and chooses other party members to join the Government. The Government’s primary task is to run the country: to develop policies, set budgets, manage and finance public services, and declare war.
What is a select committee?
Select committees are small groups of MPs or members of the House of Lords, usually capped at 11 members. These groups are tasked by Parliament to investigate specific issues, and are one of Parliament’s main tools for holding the Government to account.
Their focus is primarily to run inquiries on specific topics, the outcomes of which are public. Inquiries include consulting with the public, charities, and other relevant organisations including through events, surveys, and roundtable discussions. The outcomes of these inquiries are public, and can be used to inform legislation and/or the work of government.
While inquiry outcomes are not legally binding, they hold weight in influencing the Government. Inquiry outcomes are public, and the Government is committed to respond (in writing) to inquiry outcomes within two months of publication.
About the Health and Social Care Select Committee
The purpose of the Health and Social Care Select Committee is to examine the policy, administration, and spending of the Department of Health and Social Care.
Alongside their work on Community Mental Health Services, the committee is also currently running inquiries into the 10 Year Health Plan (scrutinising how the Government is developing the 10 year Health Plan), and Adult Social Care Reform (an inquiry exploring the cost of government inaction on social care form).
The committee is currently made up of 11 Members of Parliament; 7 Labour MPs, 2 Conservative, and 2 Liberal Democrats. The committee is chaired by Liberal Democrat MP, Layla Moran.
How to submit evidence
Evidence should be submitted here, no later than 4th February 2025. The submission page asks for your name, email address, and associated organisation (if applicable).
Evidence should be a single Word, OCT, or RFT document, which is less than 25MB, and contains no logos.
If you have trouble submitting online, contact the committee via email at hsccom@parliament.uk, or by phone on 020 7219 6182.
Who can submit?
You can submit as an individual, group of individuals, organisation, or group of organisations.
What happens to your evidence?
All evidence received will be published on the committee website, and will be publicly available, indefinitely. The only exceptions to this are if the committee decides not to accept your evidence (which they should tell you, via email), or if you explicitly request (at the time of submission) that your evidence remains anonymous (for example, if it contains extremely personal information about yourself or your family), though it cannot be guaranteed that your request will be accepted. Evidence may also be quoted in the committee’s report on the inquiry.
It is also possible that the committee may invite people who have submitted evidence to contribute more in person and/or orally; though, this is unlikely. If you would particularly like to be called to give oral evidence, you can say so in your submission.
What should your evidence contain?
You can respond to any or all of the questions listed in the call for evidence. You might want to talk about your own experiences of accessing community mental health services, examples of particularly good or poor practice, inspiring alternatives, things you think should change, broad issues that affect mental health services in the UK, or summarise research you have seen about community mental health services.
There may be a single issue you would like to focus on; that is absolutely fine. Again, you do not need to answer all of the questions.
This inquiry will help Parliament to scrutinise the work the Government is doing around mental health, so anything you think is important for them to know is worth saying.
You might want to let the committee know on what “authority” you are writing from, but remember that it will become public, so consider your boundaries and what you want to share. Things you could include are: whether you are a person with direct lived experience or are a family member/carer, whether you have a specific diagnosis, whether you have experience accessing community mental health services (or not) and for how long. You do not have to give any personal details about your life, experiences, or treatment if you do not want to.
If you have a professional role or are writing as an organisation, you might want to say a little bit about your work, too.
What will NSUN be saying?
We are currently working on our submission and will publish it as soon as it is complete.
Overall, we will urge the committee to consider mental health beyond it being a single or individual issue. We think that to understand and improve CMHS, the Government needs to look at the whole healthcare system. We will highlight the failings in current care, expand definitions of what gets to count as mental health care, outline rights-based alternatives, and offer clear policy recommendations.
While we cannot yet be sure exactly what we will say, we anticipate that our submission will be grouped around the following themes:
- Access and availability of care: Mental health care is hard to access, and even harder for particular groups.
- Waiting list times are increasing, and there is an absence of care for those on them. People often fall through the “severity gap”; sitting between high and low intensity services, with no support. There is a lack of joined-up services, meaning the system is confusing and difficult to navigate.
- There is deep inequality in who can access mental health services and the quality of care they receive.
- The popular focus on improving access and reducing waitlist times assumes that the mental health system is safe and appropriate for all. This is not true. The mental health system has the potential to harm many people; minoritised groups in particular. These include racialised people and those with precarious immigration statuses, as well as transgender and otherwise gender non-conforming people and Disabled people.
- Quality of care: A mental health system decimated by austerity/public spending cuts has led to poor quality care.
- Attempts to cut costs in mental health care are leading to increasing privatisation and “innovations” which undermine patients’ autonomy, data rights, and dignity.
- High demand for mental health services, alongside cuts to spending, mean that quality of care is decreasing. There are increasing reports of behavioural/punitive approaches to “care” for those living with so-called severe mental illness.
- Issues with quality of care are exacerbated by issues with the mental health workforce. There is a rising reliance on agency and temporary staff who are working in increasingly precarious conditions. This means that care is being offered by a workforce who are unable to build relationships with those in distress, and are often struggling themselves.
- Mental health is treated as a single and isolated issue
- There is insufficient focus on how the context of peoples’ lives impacts their mental health; tackling poverty, increasing peoples’ rights, climate justice, and living in a world free of genocide are all, also, mental health care.
- Government rhetoric around mental ill-health and/or Disabled lives
- We are concerned that the Government is tokenistically focused on mental health only to the extent that it impacts the economy (see our analysis of the Get Britain Working White Paper).
- Policy recommendations
- A set of clear recommendations for policy, including (but not limited to):
- Taking seriously the experiences of Disabled people in any social security/welfare reforms.
- Ensuring mental health services are safe for all, including: tackling rising transphobia and trans-hostility in (mental) health policy, tackling racism in mental health care (particularly via applications of the Mental Health Act).
- A set of clear recommendations for policy, including (but not limited to):
- Building alternatives
- We will emphasise the need for, and give examples of rights-based mental health care.
- We will outline the complexity of lived experience involvement in conventional policy spaces, including tokenistic approaches to involvement and overreliance on communities/charities/not-for-profits to mop up gaps in NHS care.
Get in touch
If you do not have capacity to create evidence yourself and would like us to include something on your behalf in our submission, or feel that there is anything missing from the initial outline of what our submission will cover, please feel free to email our Senior Policy & Campaigns Manager, Courtney Buckler at courtney.buckler@nsun.org.uk.