Thank you very much, Chair. This brief debate links very neatly with the debate that we've just had—I'll explain more about that in a few moments. But, it's a debate on a very specific issue that is of great concern to us on these benches, and I hope of concern to us as a Senedd, and to far too many of our constituents too. We are talking here about the high number of patients from Wales who are sent to mental health units that are a long distance from their homes, very often over the border in England. And there are grave concerns about the principle of sending people a long way from home. There are specific concerns about the quality of the care that is provided in many of these units.

There is an example here: Wayne Erasmus claims that he has not been able to speak to or see his autistic son for over three years. His son is living in a unit that has been the subject of a shocking report by the Care Quality Commission, a unit that has seen the use of physical restraint increasing. Another patient from Wales with anorexia is in the unit. She is allowed only three phone calls of 10 minutes per week with her relatives at home, and there are restrictions on what they can discuss during those calls. Does that sound acceptable to you? There are a number of similar cases that have arisen.

But even if there weren't a concern about the quality of the care provided, there is a very important point of principle about the impact on the well-being of a patient of being many hours and many hundreds of miles away from home, not being able to communicate with relatives, often not knowing how long they will be there, and certainly feeling very isolated from those care networks that are so important to people. I remember a constituent telling me how he was taken from his home in the middle of the night, whilst he was facing an acute mental health episode, and taken in a vehicle to the outskirts of London, and how that had had such a detrimental impact on the mental angst that he was already suffering at that time. That can't be acceptable under any circumstances. 

It would be one thing if these kinds of cases were rare, but they're not. Hafal, a group doing laudable work in mental health, mention a survey over a period where they couldn't fill the beds that they had in their unit in Pontardawe, where 30 per cent of the 1,000 people who were part of the study were placed in hospitals in England. There is no sense to that. 

In linking it back to our previous debate, it's important to highlight the fact that Wales doesn't have an eating disorder residential unit. It was a pleasure to have a conversation with a young woman who's a constituent of mine in the meeting today. It was wonderful to speak to Sara about her experiences, and it was heartbreaking, hearing about Sara's experiences. She had to travel a very long way from home to England in order to access treatment, and she was only a teenager at the time. That's unacceptable. 

Let's also consider the closure of the mother and baby unit in Cardiff for mothers suffering postpartum psychosis—a decision that did serious damage, as was clearly stated in the committee's inquiry here in the Senedd. Here's a quote from the Royal College of Psychiatrists: