Clause 3
Mental Health Bill [Lords]
5:15 pm
Rosie Winterton (Minister of State (Health Services), Department of Health; Doncaster Central, Labour)
I am afraid that I just do not agree. The exclusions are currently not in place, yet I do not have an enormous amount of evidence that thousands of people are being detained because of their cultural beliefs. I take up the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda made about our needing to ensure values-based practice that is non-judgmental on the part of the clinician. In a sense, however, that is the process of ensuring that the diagnosis is correct.
The other point that I particularly want to raise is that there is always a concern in such cases that a series of such exclusions could not only cause confusion for clinicians, but create what we might call a lawyer’s field day. If somebody had the ability constantly to mount challenges on the grounds that they had been detained for their beliefs, as opposed to the simple mental disorder test, that would completely open up the Bill to people challenging it. That could well happen in some very difficult cases. Let us remember that in such cases we are naturally dealing with people who do not want treatment, because that is the reason for the detention. The more exclusions we include that are not about mental disorder, but which muddy the issue, the more likely it is that time in tribunals—this relates to the point that the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton properly raised earlier—will be taken up with trying to untangle what has been advised in order to get in the way of getting treatment to people.