 House of Commons |
Session 2006 - 07 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates Mental Health |
Mental Health Bill [Lords] |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:John
Benger, Committee
Clerk †
attended the Committee Public Bill CommitteeTuesday 24 April 2007(Morning)[Mr. Frank Cook in the Chair]Mental Health Bill
pm
The
Chairman: I remind the Committee that there is a money
resolution in connection with the Bill, copies of which are available
in the room. I also remind hon. Members that, as a general rule,
adequate notice should be given of amendments. I and my fellow Chairman
do not intend to call starred amendments. The Committee will have
received a lot of textual submissions. I have done my best to approve
them quickly so that hon. Members receive them as early as possible. I
hope that they are of assistance. Membersof the Committee may
remove their upper, outer garments, if they so wish—nothing more
than
that. 10.30
am
That— (1)
the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 10.30 a.m. on
Tuesday 24th April)
meet— (a)
at 4.30 p.m. on Tuesday 24th
April; (b) at 9.25
a.m. and 1.30 p.m. on Thursday 26th
April; (c) at 10.30
a.m. and 4.30 p.m. on Tuesday 1st
May; (d) at 10.30 a.m.
and 4.30 p.m. on Tuesday 8th
May; (e) at 9.25 a.m.
and 1.30 p.m. on Thursday 10th
May; (f) at 10.30 a.m.
and 4.30 p.m. on Tuesday 15th
May; (2) the
proceedings shall be taken in the following order: Clause 1; Schedule
1; Clauses 2 to 23;
Schedule 2; Clauses 24 to 32;
Schedules 3 and 4; Clauses 33to 38; Schedule 5; Clauses 39 to
47; Schedules 6 to 8;
Clauses 48 to 50; Schedule 9; Clauses 51 and 52; Schedule 10; Clauses
53 to 55; new Clauses; new Schedules; remaining proceedings on the
Bill; (3) the
proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a
conclusion at 7.30 p.m. on Tuesday 15th
May. I am sure that I
speak on behalf of all members of the Committee when I say how pleased
we are to be sitting under your expert chairmanship, Mr.
Cook, and that of Lady Winterton. We are very much looking forward to
the debate. The Bill
certainly raises some extremely sensitive issues. I wish first to
emphasise the Government’s objectives, which are to make sure
that people with serious mental health problems receive the treatment
that they need; to modernise mental health law in line with the
development of services; to tackle current European
convention on human rights incompatibilities and to strengthen
patients’
rights. The
modernisation of mental health legislation has been under discussion
for something like nine years. I thank all the parliamentarians who
participated in
those discussions, particularly members of the pre-legislative scrutiny
Committee. I wish also to thank all the interested organisations that
have contributed to the debate and officials at the Department of
Health and the Home Office who have spent much of their waking hours
putting together this and previous, draft Bills. We have a fine body of
men and women here today. I am sure that the debate will be lively, but
I hope also
constructive. As right
hon. and hon. Members know, the Government wish to make changes to the
Bill that has come from the other place, but I emphasise that that is
because we consider it vital that treatment and help are given to some
of the most vulnerable people in our society—the subject of the
Bill. It is important to point out that we need to see the Bill in the
context of the improvements that we have been making to mental health
services during the past 10 years, particularly through the national
service framework. Many of the changes that we are proposing under the
mental health legislation are because of the many new services that we
can now offer to people with mental health
problems. I pay
tribute to the hard work and dedication of the many thousands of staff
in our mental health services who have done so much to improve what we
can offer to make sure that we have high-quality services that are
accessible to people who need them. I shall conclude my remarks by
again thanking all those who have helped to draw up the legislation and
I look forward to the forthcoming
debates. Tim
Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con): May I
reiterate the comments of the Minister in welcoming you, Mr.
Cook, and Lady Winterton to the chairmanship of the Committee? As you
are aware, Mr. Cook, this is a fairly contentious piece of
legislation and we are likely to have a full and frank exchange of
views during the debate, which I am sure you are more than familiar
with. May I also
reiterate the Minister’s comments about welcoming the fine body
of men and women on both sides of the Committee? A great deal of
expertise has gone into the Committee, which I am sure will come to the
fore. It gives those of us—certainly the Minister, myself and
others—who have been working with the Bill for many years
something of a strange sense to be here. The Bill has been some eight
years in the making. We have had two draft Bills and an excellent
pre-legislative scrutiny Committee, which I had the privilege to serve
on under Lord Carlile. Now, at last, we have the Bill in front of us in
black and white as it continues its progress.
The strong interest that we saw
in the Bill on Second Reading is symptomatic of the many people who
have an interest in getting the legislation right. On that basis, I am
pleased that the Government have given us six sittings in the programme
motion. I hope, Mr. Cook, that given the strong issues of
principle involved, particularly in those six areas of the Bill that
were substantially amended in the House of Lords, you will allow some
fairly substantial debates, because those issues remain contentious.
The issues are also fundamental to the acceptability of the Bill, not
just to Members on either side of the argument here, but to a great
many people outside this place.
Given that no fewer than 80
organisations representing mental health professionals, service users
and service providers, particularly in the voluntary sector, have
formed the extraordinarily close Mental Health Alliance, which has been
going for some years and has gone from strength to strength, we will
want to probe in Committee to find out why the Government seem to be
standing in “splendid isolation”—as my hon. Friend
the Member for Buckingham (John Bercow) described it on Second
Reading—and why they appear resolute in overturning the scrutiny
and the excellent amendments that improved the Bill during its passage
through the House of Lords.
Only today, the British Medical
Association issued a press release that stated:
“the mental health Bill will not
help vulnerable patients, say doctors.”
We want the Minister to justify why she,
her Department and her Government think that the BMA, the Royal College
of Psychiatrists, the Law Society, Rethink, Mind, the
Sainsbury Centre for MentalHealth, the Royal College of
Nursing and assorted other highly reputable organisations, which are
often quoted by the Government, are wrong to oppose the way in which
the Government are trying to overturn the Lords amendments to the
Bill. We want to have
a full debate on six issues: treatability, exemptions from mental
disorder, the renewal of detention, age-appropriate treatment, impaired
decision making and, perhaps most contentious of all and an area on
which we want to spend as much time as possible, community treatment
orders. I envisage that we will have some voting action in the process
of the Committee as well.
May I put in a plea,
Mr. Cook, for the Committee to have every opportunity to
scrutinise all the available evidence in the six sittings? You will be
aware that the Government controversially published their report on the
international experiences of community treatment orders, which the
Minister’s own Department had commissioned from the Institute of
Psychiatry last year. According to the institute, that report was
available in a format that could have been published,at least
in interim form, many months before it was,on 7 March. The
Government, however, decided to publish that report the day after the
House of Lords had finished its proceedings. Yet community treatment
orders were a very important part of that debate. My plea is that, now
we have had an opportunity to lookat that report, which offers
no empirical evidence to justify community treatment orders being
introduced, any further evidence that the Government may have
commissioned or may be considering that is germane to the
Committee’s proceedings should be made available to it at the
earliest possible
date. I am
particularly alarmed by comments by Labour Members on the recent tragic
shootings at Virginia Tech. One right hon. Member who spoke on Second
Reading drew a close parallel between what happened in Virginia and
what could happen here, subject to our deliberations
on the Mental Health Bill. I fundamentally disagree with those
implications, which are based on no evidence whatsoever. I know that
the Minister’s Department has been in close contact with mental
health experts from the university of Virginia school of law and that
the Minister’s mental health tsar has invited an eminent
professor to meet a group of Members of Parliament on 5 June, but I have
not been made aware of anysuch meeting. What happened in
Virginia may have implications for our deliberations on the Bill, but
if the Government think it relevant to invite an expert, the Committee
should be aware of what might come out of that meeting. We need to have
that information sooner rather than later.
On a general point, I hope that
other evidence that will be useful in our deliberations will not come
out when it is too late. We all want a Mental Health Bill that will
work. The primary purpose of the Mental Health Bill must be to improve
services and safeguards for patients, reduce the stigma of mental
disorder and ensure that the public are protected. That was the view of
the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee, on which I served, and its
report was widely acclaimed by many people. I hope that we can have a
full and frank debate on all the evidence available, on the basis that
all hon. Members—whatever side of the argument they stand on in
relation to the technicalities of certain parts of the Bill—want
to achieve a better situation for some of the most vulnerable people in
society. We must also
be aware that mental health legislation can contribute to stigma.
People suffering from mental illness are some of the greatest victims
of stigma in our society, so we must ensure that our deliberations are
fully conscious of that and that our final resolutions lead to
something that can, at last, help to reduce the stigma from which so
many people with mental illness suffer. I hope, therefore, that we can
do a great dealof good in producing a piece of legislation fit
for the 21st century and that it helps those people that Committee
members want to
help. Dr.
John Pugh (Southport) (LD): May I welcome you to the
Chair, Mr. Cook? When we were last in a debate together you
used a rather vivid canine metaphor to describe Liberal Democrats, from
which I hope that you will temporarily exempt me and my hon. Friend the
Member for
Romsey. I,
too, was overawed when I saw the list of Committee members. Never have
I seen such a thoughtful, experienced group of individuals assembled
for a Bill as controversial as this. It is fair to say that we do not
have a Committee of yes-men, or yes-people. I take that as a relatively
hopeful sign, because if people take fixed, immovable positions, stake
out the ground, raise their flags, and rehearse and repeat the same
arguments, there is a serious danger of our easily entering into a
dialogue of the
deaf. The Lords
debate, as we have seen already, was not like that; it was thorough,
eloquent and well-informed. Copious amounts of
research material and submissions have been made available and I assume
that every Committee member has read those thoroughly to the last
letter. We do not need to rival or equal that debate. Our job should be
much more modest; we should see whether we can bridge the gap between
the Government and, not the Opposition, but a large section of the
mental health community—the professionals, the carers and the
sufferers. The Opposition, to some extent, stand proxy for those people
and many of the amendments tabled by the Opposition are formulated by
them. We must tease out and clarify the differences that currently
exist and see, where possible, how those can be bridged.
It would
help if, in the initial stages, we could park our views about the
Government’s intentions and adopt as little forensic language as
we need to. At this stage, we need not air views about what rogue
psychiatrists may or may not do with particular proposals. We must
concentrate simply on what the proposals say and do, because the
legislation that we will produce is, ultimately, likely to affect
millions over decades. We owe it to them to progress matters as
rationally as possible. The issue is about not simply
liberties—although liberty has been talked about a great
deal—but some of the most intense suffering known to man. It
genuinely ought not to be decided simply by political force majeure, or
by the lottery of the wash-up or the ping-pong. In that spirit, we
would like to begin examining the Bill.
Question put and agreed
to. Motion
made, and Question proposed,
That, subject to the discretion
of the Chairman, any written evidence received by the Committee shall
be reported to the House for publication.—[Ms.
Winterton.] 10.45
am
|
| |
| ©Parliamentary copyright 2007 | Prepared 25 April 2007 |