Mental Health Bill [Lords]

In considering the passage of this Bill—Lords, Commons, Commons, Lords—I am reminded of the nice cop, nasty cop routine. Their lordships savaged the Bill menacingly, and this House sought collectively to cajole the Government to mend their ways. In part, I think they did. Genuinely, it has not been a bad double act. The Bill has been improved, although not to universal satisfaction. I have referred to the remarks made by Baroness Murphy and Lord Alderdice in Lords, which were full of dark foreboding, largely about the use to which psychiatrists might put the Bill. I have suggested that the Bill could be called the Mental Health (Fear of Psychiatrists) Bill. With that in mind, we would do well to accept the Lords amendments, particularly relating to the powers of the responsible clinicians, the exceptions and the additional conditions on CTOs. With regard to the exceptions, I pointed out on Report that it was restrictive, as the Government have said, but innocuous, judging by international comparisons and the way the law pans out elsewhere. However, it also sends out powerful signals about cultural, religious and social sensitivity. Some of the same effect could also be achieved, if people wished, by a statement of principles. Baroness Barker’s excellent amendment produces a kind of cross between those two solutions. It was Lord Hunt who called the attempt declaratory, and declaration has a place in legislation. It is a good amendment and sends important signals. Lord Patel’s amendments are more genuinely substantive and equally welcome. The residual question is whether enough has been done to allay the fears of Lord Patel, Lord Alderdice and Baroness Murphy, which were expressed by Lord Patel when he asked how we can be assured that this legislation will not massively increase the legal coercion of psychiatric patients. When the Government have been pressed on the question of whether more people will be under coercion as a result of this legislation, they have been shy of saying that no more people will be affected. Our question now is whether we should do more, without going so far as to frustrate the objectives of the Act. I do not know whether we can, or whether, if we are tempted to do that, we could deliver it politically. The legislation has been improved by forensic criticism on one side, and by a listening Minister. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton), who as a Health Minister played a conspicuous part in seeing this legislation through. It would have been good if the other place, notwithstanding their disappointments and amid their lordly back-slapping, had recognised that the House of Commons has played some part in making progress on this legislation. For example, Baroness Barker said:"““Some of the debates in another place were disappointing in that they were conducted by people who had clearly forgotten some of the many abuses in the mental health services in this country, where there are still people who were subjected in the past to wrongful application of compulsory mental health treatment. I meet some of them in the course of my work…although they are now very old””.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 2 July 2007; Vol. 693, c. 816.]" I do not think that she was talking about events since the 1983 Act or—I hope—about events consequent on its amendment here. Only time and a serious review—which we badly need—will tell. It seems to me that though the business today will be concluded, it is, as the Minister has implied, far from finished.