Today’s warning from every former Health Secretary from the past 20 years about inadequate mental health provision raises a number of questions. The first is whether the government really is serious about its pledge to make parity of esteem between physical and mental health a priority. Mental health has become more of a political issue in recent years, which is a good thing: parties now worry about their standing on the issue because society has become better at talking about mental illness, and therefore more people are aware of the shockingly inadequate treatment that their friends and family are receiving when they fall ill. The Tories became anxious in 2015 that the Lib Dems had owned mental health as an issue. That sort of competitive instinct is a good thing in politics: it means ministers and advisers are more likely to pay attention to an issue.
But the second question is what happens when disparity of esteem continues in the NHS? I asked Norman Lamb about this when I interviewed him about his role as health minister at the Liberal Democrat conference in 2014.
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