A father has shared the devastating tale of his daughter’s battle with severe anxiety, which he attributes to the Covid-19 pandemic, revealing on Question Time how she became “the shadow of her former self”. The concerned parent voiced his worries about the state of mental health services within the NHS, recounting his daughter’s struggle to even step outside their home as she endured a two-year wait for a referral.

Now, four years later, he describes the care as “patchy” and “uncoordinated,” during a heartfelt appeal to the panel in Dartford, Kent. This prompted Darren Jones, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, to admit that this aspect of the NHS is “failing”, yet he assured that Labour plans to bolster the system, despite recent spending cuts.

The MP highlighted that his party has already injected an additional £25 billion into the NHS, with expectations of further funding on the horizon. “The system is totally failing, and I am so sorry to hear about your daughter. My second daughter has been in hospital all week and I know how hard it is even when they are getting the care. I can’t imagine what it must be like to know that you can’t even get the care that you need,” Mr Jones, representing Bristol North West, confessed on the BBC programme.

The Mirror recently cast a spotlight on a troubling situation, exposing stories of vulnerable children, battling severe depression or grappling with eating disorders, who are subjected to NHS wait times that can stretch up to four years. The harrowing realities we unveiled in our recent feature resonated with the experiences of a man from Dartford, who disclosed he was ultimately compelled to seek private care for his daughter.

He highlighted, however, that most individuals “cannot be in that position” and are left to contend with the current strains faced by the NHS. The distressed father remarked: “It is completely inconsistent across the country, which really does worry me. There is still no end to this, every day we are dealing with it but at the moment we worry about the lack of funding, we worry about the fact that we just don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow”, reports The Mirror.

The debate featured other influential voices including shadow Cabinet Office minister Richard Holden MP, Daisy Cooper MP — the Liberal Democrats’ deputy leader and treasury spokesperson, journalist and broadcaster Camilla Tominey, and Gary Stevenson, a former financial trader turned equality activist. While they offered their insights to the father, they acknowledged that such devastating situations are becoming all too common.

Labour has announced that it is currently conducting a spending review, and Mr Jones, a father of three, has pledged that funding for the NHS will be sustained. He elaborated on the party’s commitment: “This is not what the NHS was created to do. The NHS was created to be there when you need them, and the fact is we’ve got to put more money into the system, we’ve got to make sure we are spending that money more effectively, we’ve got to be hiring those additional members of staff that we need, which is what we are absolutely committed to doing.”