Mental Health Action

22nd September 2025

FAO Clive Lewis

Dear Mainstream Labour, 

We are writing to you as members of the long-established Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk and Suffolk. As you are aware, through your own support, we have been committed and determined to advocate for improved and safer services for local people living with mental ill health. As well as this, we have spent 13 years trying to gain accountability for the vast and extensive failures within our local mental health services that have repeatedly and devastatingly led to serious harm, deterioration and death. 

We feel it is important to write to you now that Mainstream Labour has formed, in order to express our views about the complete inaction and inattention to the subject of mental health and mental healthcare within the current cabinet. 

It is deeply alarming to us as a campaign that mental health has been off the agenda since Labour won parliament. Firstly, by the removal of the position of Minister of Mental Health within the cabinet, then the attack on the most vulnerable with the proposed welfare changes that will disproportionately affect those in mental distress and finally the recent resignation of Claire Murdoch stating her reasons for stepping down was due to a lack of political dialogue, something which we, as a campaign, have also experienced from new Labour MPs, Baroness Merron, Wes Streeting MP and Sir Keir Starmer PM. Despite our persistence and hope with a Labour government, despite our repeated attempts to bring these urgent issues to the attention of our local representatives, we have experienced even less willingness to engage from Labour than we previously did from the Conservative government. This is profoundly disappointing considering Labour’s Plan for Change and accountability. We were given reassurance from Labour MPs during the previous Government that the only thing stopping them from acting was being in opposition and that things would change if and when Labour won power. 

The Labour manifesto stated that there would be greater attention to mental health care, with a focus on early intervention, reducing waiting lists and the introduction of specially trained staff to support people at risk as part of the broader mission to reduce the lives lost to suicide. Labour stated they would make the NHS fit for the future. However, what we have seen so far and are still witness to currently is that people continue to lose their lives to mental ill health and therefore, with that in mind, these people will not be around to see such improvements. Unfortunately, we have noticed over the past year especially that mental health related deaths continue. Our concern is that coroners have begun sending their prevention of future death reports directly to the Department of Health and Social Care as they lack the faith and confidence that local and national mental health services are funded, resourced and equipped sufficiently enough to prevent future deaths in similar circumstances. We have also been witness to a lack of willingness by leadership to enact on such recommendations. The coronial responses from the DHSC seem to be cut and paste efforts of desultory reassurances that are not worth the paper they are written on- continuous reference to five and ten year plans that barely relate to local contexts and resulted from a dismal effort at a ‘consultation’ under the guise of Streeting’s ‘Change NHS’. 

One of the most worrying things about the ten year plan is the loss of statutory bodies that ensure that the public and staff views are heard, such as Healthwatch and Freedom to Speak Up programs. This further silences carers, service users, members of the public and perhaps most concerningly, whistleblowers. It is for this reason, the campaign also believes it important and strongly supports the calls for the implementation of the Hillsborough Law in its entirety. We believe that it is absolutely imperative that this legislation is passed if we are ever going to establish genuine accountability and justice for widespread institutional and systemic failings. Within our localities patients, carers and bereaved families have been forced to endure extreme injustices with no meaningful way to hold those responsible accountable for the failings let alone chances at meaningful change and prevention of issues repeating. Unfortunately, many of these failings have been a direct result of extensive and longstanding failures in leadership, low morale, poor attitudes, lack of resources and fundamentally a result of a complete battering of both mental health care services and the NHS as a whole over the last decade. 

In April 2025, we held a conference in Norwich to help form a national coalition of health campaigns, with representatives from London, Barnsley, Cambridge, Manchester and Bristol with more members joining all of the time. Unfortunately all of us are now witnessing the same disgusting repetition of failures; failures that we first exposed in Norfolk and Suffolk are now emerging elsewhere and yet still, the Labour government does not care. The inaction of the previous government led people to be both desperate and hopeful for change; the absence of engagement however by the current government has left people feeling utterly betrayed. Especially given the fact that mental health is not a standalone issue but has an impact on an individual’s wider wellbeing, the opportunities they can take, their physical health and education or employment prospects. The inaction is causing incredible waste, not only for the individual and their independence, recovery and chances at life but for society and the economy as a whole. The links between mental health provision and the wider socio-economic environment are well evidenced, and yet, still no one acts. 

We appreciate some changes within the new Mental Health Bill however we cannot ignore the continuation of retrospective changes in legislation being prioritised in lieu of a focus on appropriate funding and the improvement of systems to ensure safe and effective mental health care in a compassionate way.

We therefore ask for your direct support and for Mainstream Labour’s members passion for social justice and social change to finally champion the recognition of mental health as a genuine priority that is backed by the appropriate and meaningful funding, as well as paying attention to systemic issues that have and continue to lead to unnecessary illness and loss of life. 

Unfortunately our experiences of Labour being in government so far can be compared to the dissociative, distant and untouchable leadership of NHS England. We feel damage has been done to the hard work that charities, campaigns and organisations have tried to do in reducing stigma, hate and discrimination against people living with mental ill health and disabled people. 

We therefore urge you to take the contents of this letter seriously and listen to your communities and those who are working within the under-resourced environments, especially when concerns of harm are being raised all of the time and organisational reputation is still taking priority over people’s wellbeing and patient safety. 

Many thanks 

The Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk and Suffolk

norfolksuffolkcrisis@gmail.com