HC Deb 03 April 1973 vol 854 cc214-5
13. Mr. Roger White

asked the Secretary of State for Social Services what effect the hospital building programme will have on alleviating the conditions in mental hospitals.

Sir K. Joseph

The programme helps by providing local services in replacement of those in mental hospitals and by improvement schemes in the mental hospitals themselves.

Mr. White

I am sure my right hon. Friend is aware that the renovated workhouse-type hospital is totally inadequate in terms of modern mental medical techniques. Will he therefore ensure that, within the hospital building programme, purpose-built hospitals are erected for patients who are in so much need?

Sir K. Joseph

The present Government have raised the capital expenditure on psychiatric hospitals, mental illness and mental handicap by over 80 per cent. in real terms, comparing 1972–73 with three years ago, which is a pretty notable increase. But good psychiatric techniques can be practised in old buildings and there are some first-class psychiatric services in some of our older hospitals.

Mr. McGuire

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the real aim should be to use the beds available wisely and to rehabilitate the people in mental hospitals back into the mainstream of civilian life? If that is so, can he say why a family in my constituency who want to have their daughter, the victim of a broken marriage, transferred to a hospital nearer where they live so that they can aid her rehabilitation into civilian life have been told that there are regional groupings and that because the family live outside the regional hospital grouping where the daughter is confined, until a transfer is found she will have to remain there, to the discomfort of herself and to the dismay of her family? This will delay her rehabilitation. What does the Secretary of State intend to do about it?

Sir K. Joseph

The country is desperately short of community facilities for the mentally ill and the mentally handicapped and this is what is preventing the hospitals from carrying out their proper functions. This Government, by extra money and by a White Paper on mental handicap and a circular on mental illness, have set in hand an improvement and an increase in the community services, which I have said will take 10 years to produce good results and 15 years to produce first-class results. But the improvements are in hand.