Clause 6
Mental Health Bill [Lords]
4:30 pm
Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing and Shoreham, Conservative)
I believe that those figures are right on the training of doctors. For a full-blown consultant psychiatrist, however, we are talking about 13 years, which means that considerable training, expertise and experience go into the specific job that psychiatrists are put in place to do. It is different from what a psychologist and consultant nurse will do.
To return to the premise of the Lords amendments, it must be in the best interests of a potential patient if a professional with the most extensive experience possible is available before the most momentous decisions in a patient’s life are made: first, the decision to section, with which the Government take no issue; and, secondly, the decision to renew sectioning. Some of us contend that the latter is a more serious and less obvious consideration, which is why the fullest expertise must be brought to bear.
The Lords amendments would ensure that, before a detention was renewed, patients would receive similar consideration to that which they received during the original sectioning order. Surely, we just need to replicate the rigour of the original process. The amendments were changed in the Lords after the Government gave assurances in Committee about the skills and competences that would be required of a responsible clinician, which would be included in the code of practice. Again, it would be useful if the Minister would provide some details on what has happened since then.
The purpose of the amendments is to find some accommodation with the Government based on a clear reference to a legal case—a precedent in medical law—about what would be acceptable in the courts. We framed the amendments to refer to the case of Winterwerp v. The Netherlands, so that the objective medical expertise of mental disorder would have the same meaning as it has in that case. The amendments are a belt and braces exercise.
In conclusion, I repeat that the amendments would not debase the role of all other professionals involved in patient care; they would ensure that at a difficult time the very best professional expertise was brought to bear on the patient. When discussing the amendments that gave rise to the clause, Lord Carlile said:
“Each renewal of detention is a fresh deprivation of liberty.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 19 February 2007; Vol. 689, c. 940.]
I wholeheartedly concur with that.
There are glaring inconsistencies in the Government’s case, in having moved from their original position and now in keeping the medical conditions pertinent to the original section, and the potential inconsistency with the 2005 Act. I fear that if the Government get their way and overturn the amendments, it will be a recipe for confusion, particularly as to where the buck actually stops on decisions being made for patients’ renewed detention. Surely, that cannot be in the best interests of patients. Our amendments, which I propose formally, are a sensible way of accommodating the Government’s position and achieving a practical and workable solution in this important part of the Bill.
Several hon. Members rose—