‘This isn’t staged, I promise,’ Gavin Barwell joked as an MP bounded up to our table in the Portcullis House atrium to demand why the Croydon Central MP hadn’t been given a job in the reshuffle. Had he turned something down, his colleague asked, throwing his hands up in the air in despair. Rather like Robert Halfon, though, it’s not a bad thing Barwell remains on the backbenches as at least his campaigning zeal is undented by the appearance of red boxes on his desk.
Instead, the Tory MP’s desk has a private members’ bill sitting on it which has its second reading next Friday. It’s the Mental Health (Discrimination) (No.2) Bill, which calls for three changes to the law around what people suffering from a whole range of mental health issues can and can’t do. Barwell spoke about the proposals in the moving debate before the summer recess in which a number of his colleagues in the Commons revealed their own struggles with mental illness.
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