Clause 2
Mental Health Bill [Lords]
12:15 pm
Rosie Winterton (Minister of State (Health Services), Department of Health; Doncaster Central, Labour)
I should like to start by paying a warm tribute to the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton, who has put in a lot of work over the years to advance the cause of people on the autistic spectrum. As she mentioned on Second Reading, she is vice-president of the National Autistic Society, and the founder member of the all-party parliamentary group on autism. I was on the edge of my seat waiting for the thoughts that had not been put on record before, but that will have to remain between her and my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North. I look forward to finding out what they actually were.
I think that it would be helpful, particularly as the hon. Lady set out so clearly the reasons why she has moved the amendment, for me to refer back to why there is the exclusion or exception for learning disability, and why clause 2 exists in the first place. As hon. and right hon. Members know, there has been a lot of debate about learning disability itself and whether it should be excluded. Let me go back to what we have now achieved in terms of the Bill. It will mean that people with learning disabilities can be detained for medical treatment or made subject to guardianship on the basis of their learning disabilities alone only if those disabilities are accompanied by
“abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible conduct”
on their part. Similarly, it will ensure that people with learning disabilities cannot be made subject to the new provisions for supervised community treatment solely on account of their learning disabilities, unless, again, they are associated with
“abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible conduct”
on their part.
As I said, that provision was not in the 2004 draft Bill. In that Bill, which was submitted for pre-legislative scrutiny, there was no special provision in relation to learning disability. We started from a principle—in many senses it is still valid—that exclusions of any kind were likely to create an arbitrary obstacle to the proper and effective use of the legislation to protect people from the effects of the mental disorder. However, we also know that many people with learning disabilities, and those who work and care for them, were concerned that that would put people with learning disabilities at a greater risk of being detained inappropriately. We do not believe that that is the case, but it is true that historically this has been a very emotive issue, going back to the 1983 Act. There was great concern that people with learning disabilities could be inappropriately detained, sometimes because of the effect of their behaviour, which might be seen as not the norm.
We listened to what the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee said with regard to learning disabilities. When we decided to amend, rather than replace, the Mental Health Act, we took the opportunity to say that we would preserve the way in which the Act currently works with regard to learning disability. That is why we have preserved that provision in clause 2.
That means that before professionals even begin to think about whether a person whose only mental disorder is a learning disability meets the criteria for detention under section 3 and similar sections, they must first be sure that the disability is associated with
“abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible conduct.”
The reference to aggressive or irresponsible conduct does not suggest that either is a normal feature of learning disability—quite the reverse, as I am sure all hon. Members would agree. It is to distinguish the small minority from the rest. The vast majority of people with learning disabilities do not display
“abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible conduct”
any more than vast majority of the rest of the population.