My Lords, these two amendments had a slightly chequered path to the Marshalled List. The noble Lord, Lord Touhig, and I sat down after Committee and wondered whether we could somehow incorporate the two ideas into one. We took our resulting amendments to the Table Office, which said that it would not do. They were then split out again. Once marshalled, the two amendments were tabled in Lord Touhig’s name with my support, whereas in fact the first was in his name and the second in mine with his support. The Table Office has apologised, but I felt I should set the record straight.
The Minister has just given the House a very eloquent account of the role of the Armed Forces covenant, and in Committee he brought out the fact that there was no need to worry about parity of esteem for mental health because it all linked in with the Armed Forces covenant, which took into consideration things such as the NHS mandate, and therefore there was no concern.
I had decided that I would do a bit of work to see what the statistics showed. There is a wealth of statistics on the MoD website. I commend the MoD for increasing awareness of, and taking action on, mental health over the last few years. However, when looking at parity of esteem I needed to compare mental health with physical health, and there were no similar statistics on physical health to enable me to weigh one against the other. The Minister said in Committee that parity would not be required because parity was implied in the covenant,
as in the NHS mandate, as I have just said. Clearly, however, this is not evidenced and I would like the Minister to reflect on that when we come back for Third Reading. Will the Minister also explain how physical and mental health services are commissioned, in particular where services are not delivered by service personnel, and why this might be deemed acceptable?
I certainly do not intend to push this inclusion in the amendment but fine words butter no parsnips and the evidence is not there. Parity of esteem is not transparent and for the men and women with mental health conditions, it is not good enough—I do not mean the services that they receive but the fact that they cannot be clear whether they are being treated within the same sort of timeframes or scales as for physical health. I would certainly welcome a rethink before Third Reading.
9 pm