In My View: Dr Rosena Allin-Khan, MP for Tooting

Parents arriving in A&E with ashen faces, holding their children whose bodies are skeletal and covered in cuts.

Families on suicide watch. Frontline NHS workers at breaking point.

This is the reality facing too many people as a result of Conservative Government failures.

Hospitals are setting up their own food banks for staff, including nurses, to use. This is Tory Britain in 2022.

Is it any surprise then, that more NHS staff are taking days off sick because of poor mental health?

Our nurses, health visitors and support staff are taking millions of days off sick because of mental illness each year.

Mental illness costs the UK economy £117billion a year. It doesn’t make sense for the Government to continue to ignore it.

Waiting times are soaring and far too often, help depends on your postcode, not your need.

Children are being let down.

Referrals for children and young people with eating disorders have doubled, and referrals for children who are self-harming have tripled.

Children are waiting days in A&E, in a mental health crisis. In one trust, children have been waiting up to 79 hours in A&E in crisis.

This is the direct result of Tory Government cuts to beds and a failure to properly resource mental health services.

How are our children supposed to grow up to achieve their potential if there isn’t even support available when they need it most?

The new Labour administration in Wandsworth Town Hall has already commissioned a Mental Health Needs Assessment to ensure resources are spent on priority needs and that marginalised communities with unmet need will be identified.

However, councillors have told me that more support is needed from the Government to reduce waiting times for assessment and to get people help.

It was also inspiring to see the fantastic work of Mind and the Co-op at their open-access hub in Croydon, designed to create long-term, community-based support networks for those in need.

I took part in an amazing Zumba class and spoke to those who rely on the hub for mental health support.

After years of Conservative mismanagement, both locally and nationally, our public services and our economy are on the brink, with growth on the floor and basic services suffering.

We need a growing economy to pay for modern, preventative, sustainable healthcare – but to grow the economy we need to start getting our public services back on track too.

If ever there was an argument that prevention is better than cure, it is with mental health.

The next Labour Government will transform our mental health services: New staff, new services, faster treatment, prevention as our watchword.

Better mental health for all.

The country has a choice: same old Conservative mismanagement of our NHS or a preventative approach to mental health services under Labour.

We need a Labour Government now.