Luciana Berger MP, Labour’s Shadow Cabinet Minister for Mental Health, responding to the BBC Panorama programme investigation into children’s mental health services highlighting research from the charity Inquest showing that nine young people have died while receiving in-patient psychiatric care since 2010, said:

“Every one of these deaths is a tragedy. They all deserve to be acknowledged and properly investigated, so lessons can be learned. 

“It is utterly appalling that the Government cannot say how many young people have died in the care of NHS mental health services. How can Tory Ministers claim to be prioritising mental health when they have no idea about the crisis that is unfolding on the ground?

"On their watch, more children have been placed on adult wards, forced to travel hundreds of miles just to get a bed or left to become more seriously ill because they did not receive the right help early enough. It is a damning indictment of this Tory Government’s failure that the number of children with mental health problems turning up at A&E is now double what it was in 2010.

"These are some of the most vulnerable children our NHS sees and they are being badly let down. Ministers must urgently match their rhetoric on mental health with real action and deliver the changes to children’s mental health services that are desperately needed and long overdue.”