Clause 4
Mental Health Bill [Lords]
2:15 pm
Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing and Shoreham, Conservative)
That is entirely the point that I made this morning. Looking at my notes now, I can see that I said that if there is a serious risk of a person being about to commit suicide, or capable of or intent upon suicide—if a person is in crisis—de facto their decision-making capacity is impaired.
Let us also remember that a recent addition tothe Mental Health Alliance is the Samaritans. The organisation has some expertise in suicide and in people who are in a state of crisis and it has been alarmed at the implied connection between committing suicide and suffering from a mental illness. It does not agree with that. It has also signed up to the impaired decision-making clause. The Samaritans organisation talks with some expertise. In whatever way it reached its decision—democratically or not—however official or unofficial its brief might have been, and on whatever basis it signed up to join the Mental Health Alliance, the organisation believes that an impaired decision-making clause is beneficial to people and certainly would not lead to an increase in suicide or an increased risk of suicide. Some volunteers within the organisation might take a different view, but that is what the organisation is officially saying, and experts such as the Samaritans are people to whom we need to listen.