Speeches by Craft.

“This is great. It is just that the provisions in the Bill are there for a reason. They are there because we think it is completely immoral that someone with a learning disability can be detained purely because of that. Will we end it by the end of this Parliament? Will it be illegal as well as immoral?”

“Earlier, we were discussing the Mental Health Bill and the provisions around learning disability and autism. There are currently—this is happening today—people with a learning disability, such as Down’s syndrome or autism, that are being detained, sometimes for years on end, in mental health units that are unsuitable, …”

“Does our not knowing when we will get there not leave the situation continuing in perpetuity?”

“On this point, I think that the concern people have is competing priorities. What does good look like? What is the point at which the Secretary of State can look and think, “Community services are sufficient. We can switch this on”? And when do you think we will reach it? When do you personally think we will get there?”

“Would an implementation date in the Bill help? Would it almost put a rocket up having those community services ready?”

“That is really positive. The concern is that we are in an era of lots of competing priorities in healthcare, particularly in this space and in adult social care. We have just concluded our adult social care inquiry, and we saw how incredibly stretched that area is. For people with a learning disability or autism to be …”

“If we turn to learning disability and autism, one aspect of the Bill that the sector has strongly welcomed is removing the criteria for detention based solely on someone having a diagnosis of autism or a learning disability. However, that particular clause does not come into effect until the Secretary of State thinks t…”

“Turning to the Mental Health Bill, I was on the Bill Committee, along with my Select Committee colleague Gregory Stafford, who unfortunately is not here now. There were some interesting discussions, and I will pick up on a couple of bits, which we will split into two halves. The Local Government Association and the Ass…”

“That is really helpful. I just want to clarify, because I think it would be helpful for people watching this to understand: can you be crystal clear about who can access this service? How will people find out about it? How will they know they can just turn up to a walk-in centre, and when they can access it? Is it for …”

“Are those outcomes dictated by the patient, and is the patient able to articulate what they want out of it? For instance, the survey that gives a rank on the famous Edinburgh scale for normal levels of human despair would not always be applicable to what someone might be looking to achieve, so can that be fed in?”

“How does that work in practice? How are people—and patients—able to measure their outcomes in real time?”

“My question is on co-production. All the evidence we have heard on the services is that they are most successful when they are co-produced with people with lived experience. What kind of plans are in place to co-produce not only the services, but how outcomes are measured? We have heard fairly constantly that quite oft…”

“Will that be by the end of this Parliament?”

“A lot of local authorities and a lot of schools would say that ICBs are not really pulling their weight currently when it comes to meeting the needs of people in the SEND system. They do not commission strategically. The professionals that are at use in the health service are not actively and effectively meeting the ne…”

“I hear what you are saying. There is a current statutory framework around it and a current duty on ICBs to assess the need in their area. However, a lot of professionals in the education sector and particularly in local authorities would argue that that is not sufficient to get ICBs to meet that need. For example, on a…”

“I would just put it to you that what we hear from professionals in this space, parents and families is that health is absent from that conversation and that the needs of individual children are quite often not met. Outside of having a statutory obligation on health providers, this is something that falls brilliantly in…”

“Just to pick up on that, you said it has been developed with ICBs and chairs. Was it not co-produced with local authorities and schools as well? Did you look at that framework going wider? Part of the issue seems to be that everything is operating on a very siloed basis. Would it not have been useful for local authorit…”

“Will that be a specific SEND metric? If you want to look online at how your ICB performs on this, will you be able to see that?”

“In terms of the strategic modelling and transparency, will there be an ability for local authorities, parent carer forums or anything along those lines, to monitor certain metrics around how ICBs are delivering on SEND? That might be diagnosis pathways, timelines for diagnosis or actual waiting lists to see professiona…”

“I would like to focus on a fairly specific area around commissioning. We recently held a session at which Helen Hayes from the Education Select Committee guested. She posed some rather interesting questions about the ESC’s SEND inquiry and, rather notably, the absence of health playing into this. They have been finding…”