Former Minister of State for Care and Support, the Rt. Honorable Sir Norman Lamb MP, a passionate mental health campaigner and advocate for equal public funding for physical and mental health, gave one of the opening keynotes on Day Two of this year’s Design in Mental Health conference in Coventry, drawing on his experience both as an MP and Minister, and his extensive and committed work ‘behind the scenes’ as a champion of first-class mental healthcare provision fit for the 21st century. The Network’s editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports.
Sir Norman Lamb MP will already be wellknown to many of The Network’s readers for his tireless campaigning on mental healthcare issues, and particularly his efforts for parity of focus on mental and physical healthcare from Government and other funding bodies. By way of biographical background, following his election to Parliament as the MP for North Norfolk in 2001, he became an International Development Spokesperson, before joining the Treasury Team and being elected to the Treasury Select Committee. In 2005 he was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, championing the case for employee share ownership in Royal Mail, and in 2006 became Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary.
Following the 2010 General Election, he served first as Chief Parliamentary Advisor to Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, and then as a junior minister at the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, before being promoted to Minister of State for Care and Support at the Department of Health. As Health Minister, he worked to introduce crucial reforms to the care system, such as introducing a cap on care costs, and ensuring that carers get the support they need, as well as leading a drive to ‘join up’ the health and care system, with a greater focus on preventing ill-health. He also challenged the NHS to ensure that mental health gets treated with the same priority as physical health, introducing the first ever access and waiting time standards in mental healthcare for the treatment of common mental health problems such as depression and anxiety, and for patients experiencing their first episode of psychosis.
Role as Shadow Health Secretary
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