Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust (NSFT) provides local mental health services. The Care Quality Commission has rated NSFT “inadequate”, four times since 2017. 

Although the rating has recently improved, I still want a public inquiry to investigate how the trust was allowed to fail repeatedly, learning lessons to prevent it happening again.

When I wrote to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care about this issue I said: 

“A public inquiry into that systemic failure is critical to delivering justice for those who have lost their lives and had their lives ruined, the families who have lost loved ones, and the staff who have been put in an impossible position”. 

Read the BBC’s article on the NSFT here. 

Here are some of the things I’ve been doing to get better quality mental health care for local people: 

Febuary 2024

• I reiterated my calls for a statutory public inquiry following news that the integrated care boards covering Norfolk and Suffolk and NSFT have written to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to argue that a public inquiry would compromise the services provided to patients.
• Read the BBC’s article on NSFT here.

January 2024

• The tragic deaths of two girls, their father and their aunt found stabbed at their home in Costessey led to concerned families asking whether NSFT had any involvement with the man who killed his two daughters and his sister-in-law.
• After these calls for openness from the trust, I told the Eastern Daily Press that given the trust’s appaling track record on unaccountable deaths and systemic service failure, basic transparancy is a highly unlikely prospect. Read more in the EDP here.
• I also told the Norwich Evening News that we won’t have any answers until the trust comes out and tells us. Read more in the NEN here.

June 2023 

• Following a review that found NSFT lost track of patient deaths, I told ITV Anglia that until we have an independent inquiry, those who have lost loved ones will never be able to have true peace.  
• Read my full statement on NSFT’s “mortality review” here. 

February 2023 

• I wrote to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to call for a public inquiry into NSFT’s systemic failure, asking him to meet with me and mental health campaigners from Norfolk and Suffolk.  
• Read my letter here. 

August 2022 

• Following the news that 140 NSFT doctors wrote to the chair of the trust to express their “lack of confidence” in the organisation’s leadership, I wrote to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to demand intervention from central Government, and that the Secretary of State needs to instruct his department to take direct control of NSFT. 
• Read my letter to the Secretary of State here. 

July 2022 

• I hosted a meeting in Parliament which brought together bereaved families, former frontline staff, the Minister for Mental Health, and some MPs from the region. 
• Read my statement on the meeting here. 

June 2022 

• I raised NSFT’s failings in Parliament, where the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Sajid Javid confirmed he would meet with me to discuss the state of the trust.  
• I also secured a commitment from Sajid Javid that the Minister for Care and Mental Health will join a meeting in Parliament with affected constituents and bereaved families, to hear about their experiences with the trust and what action they want to turn the trust around. 
• Watch my intervention here. 

April 2022 

• I raised in Parliament the urgent matter of the Care Quality Commission handing NSFT yet another inadequate rating. Watch my point of order here. 
• I asked the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to instruct his department to take NSFT into direct control with immediate effect. Read my letter here. 

January 2020 

• After it was revealed that NSFT would stay in special measures, requiring improvements to safety and leadership, I told local press that local people deserve and need high quality, properly resourced mental health services. Under this government, they’ve seen catastrophic underfunding of and cuts to all the services which sustain our wellbeing and prevent ill health. 
• Read my full statement here. 

December 2018 

• I met with the Committee of the Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk and Suffolk yesterday in Parliament to talk about the urgent issues facing NSFT. We discussed the need for cross-party pressure on the government to intervene.
• Read my statement on the meeting here. 

November 2018 

• After NSFT was rated inadequate by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) for a third time, I told the BBC that it is not enough for NSFT managers to mouth platitudes about improvements, and that we were looking at a national and local system-wide failure of governance. Alongside finding “significant concerns” after inspection, the CQC recommended that there must be support for the trust to make “immediate changes necessary to keep patients safe”. 
• Read the full article here.