Frank Cook (Stockton North, Labour)

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.

Rosie Winterton (Minister of State (Health Services), Department of Health; Doncaster Central, Labour)

I beg to move,

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 (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing & Shoreham, Conservative)

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.

John Pugh (Shadow Minister, Health; Southport, Liberal Democrat)

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.

Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing & Shoreham, Conservative)

This is the first Committee that I have been involved in under the new public Bill procedures, so some brief comments might be useful so that we all know where we are coming from.

Frank Cook (Stockton North, Labour)

Me too.

Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing & Shoreham, Conservative)

We are all on a fast learning curve here, Mr. Cook, and I wrote to the Minister before Easter to get some elaboration on how she thought this process might work. My concern, not least in light of my previous reference to the publication of the report on community treatment orders after the House of Lords had finished its deliberations, was that further scrutiny of new evidence would be beneficial to the Committee. I therefore asked the Minister whether the full rigours of the Public Bill Committee could be brought to bear, so that we could have an oral witness session, particularly on community treatment orders, to examine that important evidence, which could then feed through to the Committee’s deliberations, as well as the normal written submissions that have been mentioned. The Minister suggested that further oral witness sessions were not necessary, in her view, and that the procedure would be to invite written submissions that would be then be made available to the Committee. I also thank you, Mr. Cook, forthe speed with which you have made those initial38 submissions—

Frank Cook (Stockton North, Labour)

Forty-six.

Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing & Shoreham, Conservative)

Yes, it is now up to 46. For those of us who took them away, those initial 38 ruined our weekends but enabled us to have some time to look at them properly before the Committee started. Very interesting submissions they are too, and I am gladthat that invitation was taken up seriously by the organisations and individuals who have responded.

I understand that written submissions can continue to be made and will therefore be made available to the Committee, subject to your discretion, Mr. Cook, until the final day of its proceedings, and that those written  submissions approved by you will also be published as part of the written Hansardrecord of this Committee. May I take your nod as to whether I am getting it right so far?

Frank Cook (Stockton North, Labour)

I think that I had better provide some clarification. Some submissions have been presented with the proviso that they will not be published on the internet. That being the case, the submissions will not be preserved there but in the archives.

Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing & Shoreham, Conservative)

Thank you for that clarification, Mr. Cook. I am sure that the Committee will be more than happy to rely on your discretion as to what finally gets published; as we have seen, what has been made available so far certainly seems to be fairly extensive.

My point here is that the Minister suggested that we did not need to have further scrutiny of this Bill, and while those of us involved with it over several years might be inclined to agree, new things have come out. The Bill that we are scrutinising is now fundamentally different from that which started its scrutiny process in December in the House of Lords. On that basis, we thought that further scrutiny would be beneficial to the Committee, and as I have mentioned to you, Mr. Cook, several members of the Committee decided to set up a witness session yesterday afternoon in Committee Room 16. There, for a marathon three and a half hours, 11 members of the House of Lords and the House of Commons, from the Conservative, Lib Dem and Welsh nationalist parties, and Cross Benchers—unfortunately no Labour Members were available to attend—scrutinised no fewer than 25 witnesses from an enormous range of organisations and individuals. The vast majority of them are familiar with the Bill, whether in submitting evidence, appearing as witnesses before the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee or making other representations all along. For three and a half hours we took some fairly extensive evidence, most pointedly on the community treatment orders, to which we devoted most of our time yesterday afternoon. We were able to have the proceedings recorded, and they will shortly be transcribed by a Hansard reporter in a written format, which we would then wish to publish and make available to all Members of Parliament,of both Houses, and certainly to members of the Committee, as soon as it has physically been transcribed.

Chris Bryant (Rhondda, Labour)

The hon. Gentleman said that the session was recorded by Hansard, which would suggest that it was an official Committee of the House. Is that what he means?

Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing & Shoreham, Conservative)

No, that is not what I said. I said that the proceedings were recorded by House officers, but the transcription will be done by a Hansard reporter on a free-lance basis, for which a fee will be paid. So, the session was not, nor was it ever assumed to be, an official Committee of the House. At no point wasit claimed to be an all-party group or an official Committee.

To clarify, a joint letter was sent by the hon. Member for Romsey and myself, initially to every member of the pre-legislative scrutiny committee, whose names—from both Houses—we obviously knew, which referred  to an impromptu committee being set up that we hoped would have the involvement of all parties. At no point did we claim that it would be some sort of official committee. It was made quite clear that because we felt that further witness sessions were desirable—it is better to inform the Committee, and I do not see what the downside could possibly be—we wanted to set up a committee involving as many interested parties as possible, from all parties as well, to take expert witness testimonies.

James Duddridge (Rochford & Southend East, Conservative)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr. Cook. We are all finding our way on the Public Bill Committee and I understand one of the reasons that we could not have an evidence session right at the beginning of proceedings was that the Bill started out in another place. However, does my hon. Friend agree that it would be an idea to have such evidence sessions when the Bill starts in the other place? I certainly found yesterday’s evidence session rewarding and useful, and would have found it much more so had we been able to do it formally, on a cross-party basis, so it was much more similar to a Select Committee?

Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing & Shoreham, Conservative)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, because he was one of the attendees at the session yesterday. He has come to the legislation relatively late. Clearly, the deliberations and evidence taken yesterday have better informed his ability to scrutinise the legislation in Committee. That was the whole point, and it was unfortunate that the committee could notbe conducted on an official basis. However, at the end of the day, the result is to achieve a written record of25 witnesses, including some who agreed with the changes proposed in the amendments, and some previously pleaded in aid by the Government and some not.

Chris Bryant (Rhondda, Labour)

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I do not want to sour the beginning of the debate, because I hope that we can reach a Bill that commands the respect and support of as many Members of the House as possible. However, I think that he has inadvertently misled the Committee, because his e-mail to the Minister, which was widely circulated by his office to others, said quite specifically the opposite of what he just told us, namely, that the Minister was invited to speak at a special all-party committee.

Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing & Shoreham, Conservative)

I have not misled the Committee in any way. I will hoy out the letter. On Second Reading, I said that we were setting up the committee and would invite the Minister to attend. At no point was it challenged as claiming to be anything other than what the letter—a copy of which was also sent to the hon. Gentleman—referred to, which was an impromptu committee. On Thursday, the Whip in charge of the Bill gave me a list of all the Labour members of the Bill Committee. Afterwards, I think at 11.22 am, the letter went out as an e-mail, inviting the hon. Member for Rhondda and other members of the Committee to the impromptu committee. Curiously, at business questions, which started some eight minutes later, I gather that the hon. Gentleman mentioned that he had received the letter and referred to me by name. When the hon.  Gentleman was challenged by the Speaker about whether he had mentioned to me that I would be named, he said that he had been trying to get hold of my office all morning.

Rosie Winterton (Minister of State (Health Services), Department of Health; Doncaster Central, Labour)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing & Shoreham, Conservative)

I will in a minute.

That was rather strange, given that the letter arrived by e-mail only some eight minutes before business questions and my office had no record of receiving any calls from the hon. Gentleman, having been manned since 7.30 that morning.

Ian Gibson (Norwich North, Labour)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing & Shoreham, Conservative)

I will give way to all hon. Members in a tick. I do not understand why there seems to be a fuss about a committee that was set up informally on an impromptu basis for the purpose of better informing everyone involved with the Mental Health Bill about our proceedings. I think that the Minister wanted to intervene first. I shall then give way to the hon. Member for Norwich, North.

Frank Cook (Stockton North, Labour)

Order. I am anxious to ensure that our deliberations take place with an attitude of tolerance and free exchange. At the moment, we are discussing a motion on written evidence that may be submitted before the last sitting of the Committee. I do not want to become bogged down at this stage in the finer detail of how and why the event under discussion has happened. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham has given what seemed a fairly clear explanation of how, why and who was involved in the matter, and related it to a statement made on Second Reading. I do not want to spend undue time going through the detail now. If such questions are essential, I shall go along with them for the moment, but we are absorbing an undue amount of time in what is a tight programme; 12 sittings have been allocated, and we shall have a lot to accommodate.

Rosie Winterton (Minister of State (Health Services), Department of Health; Doncaster Central, Labour)

Bearing in mind absolutely what you have just said, Mr. Cook, I wanted to intervene on the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham to say that written evidence is extremely important, but that I was a little concerned about the impressions given to organisations because of his letter inviting me to

“be the first witness at the special all-party committee we have convened”.

I did not want organisations to feel that I had not gone to a formal Committee of the House, which was the impression that had been given.

Frank Cook (Stockton North, Labour)

That is a fair point.

Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing & Shoreham, Conservative)

I shall give way to the hon. Member for Norwich, North.

Ian Gibson (Norwich North, Labour)

My concern is not about whether we hear the best evidence and all the evidence that is available, but that we must contain that evidence within  a room such as this where we can discuss it openly with each other. To set up another committee or all-party mental health group seems to undermine the work of this Committee. I feel that deeply. If we want to play at silliness, we can start taking trips around every mental health hospital in this country, Russia and the rest of the world. We do not want to get into that. If we can get evidence from other places, fine. We do not need to set up other committees that seem to undermine the work of this Committee. Bring the evidence to us; we shall look at it and argue about it. If we, as a Committee, think that we need to have someone to inform us about matters because we do not understand issues or argue about them, I accept that. What the hon. Gentleman has been talking about smacks of undermining the work of this Committee.

Frank Cook (Stockton North, Labour)

Mr. Loughton, you have made your point clearly. Can we move on with the motion?

Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing & Shoreham, Conservative)

May I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton?

Angela Browning (Deputy Chairman (Organising and Campaigning), Conservative Party; Tiverton & Honiton, Conservative)

As a member of the scrutiny Committee, I should like to mention one of the useful things about yesterday’s meeting. The scrutiny Committee made a great many recommendations to Government in response to the draft Bill, Just about every salient recommendation was rejected by the Government, but they have now been reinstated in the Bill in another place. Revisitingthe evidence base in the light of those changed circumstances was therefore extremely constructiveand helpful.

Doug Naysmith (Bristol North West, Labour)

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once more, Mr. Cook. I understand that you want to move on, but I would grateful if you would let me say a word or two, because of the reference to the scrutiny Committee. I think that I am the only Government Committee member who was also a member of the scrutiny Committee. I received two invitations to the meeting yesterday: as a former member of the scrutiny Committee and as a member of this Committee.

It is disingenuous, to say the least, to suggest that Committee members missed a huge amount by not attending the meeting yesterday. Setting up the meeting struck me almost as a political game to try to trip up Labour Committee members. I understand, Mr. Cook, that you do not want remarks like that to be made. I shall try to restrain myself. However, I have never, ever—I am not allowed to mention people in the audience, so I apologise—had more information supplied for a Bill than we have been supplied with over the past few months by the organisations that have been sending it in, since before Second Reading. The pile of papers is so high. I have read much of that evidence carefully. In fact, I read most of it when I was a member of the scrutiny Committee. There is no lack of evidence for Committee members to read. I am  not saying that it is a bad thing for people to talkto Conservative Members. However, it is clear thatwe have plenty of stuff to go on. There is loads of information.

Frank Cook (Stockton North, Labour)

Order. You have repeated those words three times.

Doug Naysmith (Bristol North West, Labour)

I do not think that that is true.

Frank Cook (Stockton North, Labour)

Order. Please resume your seat while I am on my feet. You have had far too long for an intervention and have been very repetitive.

Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing & Shoreham, Conservative)

Perhaps I can rise to speak without any hon. Member trying to intervene on me.

I shall bring my comments to a close by saying that at no juncture was there any intention to mislead the Minister, Committee members or the House about the nature of what was happening yesterday. The letter that went out to the hon. Member for Rhondda and all other Committee members said:

“It is our intention to make this impromptu committee cross-party and involve Members of both Houses.”

Invitations went out on that basis to all the people I have mentioned and to others who had been involved in the House of Lords—small parties as well—who we thought could contribute. We would have welcomed greatly the input of Labour Members with relevant expertise. There was never any intention to mislead. I cannot see what the problem is with an extra piece of research being discussed, particularly on the subject of community treatment orders, by the authors of the report. They took questions and debated with another witness who took issue with some of their findings. That was exceedingly helpful. That facility was not available to any Members of the House of Lords at any point during their deliberations on the Bill. Therefore, hon. Members being part of the deliberations yesterday could surely only improve the process.

I should like to make it clear that we will make the transcript of yesterday’s proceedings, which those who attended seemed to think was useful—all the witnesses were grateful for the opportunity to put their case, wherever it came from—available to all Committee members as soon as it is prepared. I hope that we can submit it formally to the Committee to be included in the Hansard evidence, along with the other witness memorandums.

Tim Boswell (Daventry, Conservative)

Does my hon. Friend agree that perhaps the most important thing is not who did or did not attend the committee in the afternoon, but the attention paid to the points made in it and elsewhere in the extensive evidence that we have received from the Minister and other Committee members on this legislation?

Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing & Shoreham, Conservative)

My hon. Friend is right. That is why we did not just do it without recording it. We wanted something that people could use. I have to say that that is not unique. There was a similar sitting for the Offender Management Bill.

Frank Cook (Stockton North, Labour)

Order. I think that we are all very clear in our minds—or we should be—what has happened and the intention behind it. If the written summary of the proceedings is submitted to me before the final sittings of this Committee, I shall consider whether it should be presented or not. If that satisfies the Committee, may we continue with the debate on the motion?

Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing & Shoreham, Conservative)

I am very grateful for that answer.

Frank Cook (Stockton North, Labour)

We will now begin to consider the Bill proper.