Mental Health Bill [Lords]

I agree entirely. There are a number of issues about protecting and securing best practice: good leadership, good management, continual professional development and the legislative and professional regulatory frameworks. All those things contribute towards ensuring maximum professionalism at the front line of our mental health services. In time, this legislation will be seen to have added significantly to those professionals’ ability to do the job as they would want. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham also raised the question of revolving-door patients. As we have said in the past, attempting to define the clinical group in view, as the Lords amendments have attempted to do, is crude and arbitrary. It prevents supervised community treatment from being available to protect vulnerable patients, as well as other people in the community. SCT must be available to patients undergoing their first period of compulsory treatment, who may be at great risk if they are discharged into the community without the protection of SCT. The incredibly important point is that the first relapse in the community can often be the fatal one. It would be irresponsible to ignore what is clear from the evidence on making such decisions. The hon. Gentleman also said that the criteria for SCT were too broad and would lead to there being too many people in the system. Actually, the criteria set a high threshold for placing a patient under a community treatment order or SCT: first, a patient must be detained for treatment in hospital; and secondly, the amendment now agreed in the other place makes clear the factors that a clinician must consider when placing a patient under SCT. They include the risk of a patient getting worse in the community. In assessing that risk, the clinician must consider the patient’s history. Those are reasonably clear safeguards in terms of thresholds. The hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh) usually makes measured contributions, and did so again in his brief speech today. [Interruption.] We are not that inclusive. However, it is bizarre to suggest that Ministers should announce today the number of people who will end up on treatment orders, or that they should guess or guesstimate such a figure. This is all about best professional judgments in terms of the interests of people with mental health needs, their families, and the wider community. It would be ludicrous for the Government or the House to prescribe the number of people who will end up accessing the new form of treatment.