Clause 14
Mental Health Bill [Lords]
10:30 am
Tim Boswell (Daventry, Conservative)
Good morning and welcome to the Chair, Mr. Cook.
I accept the spirit of the Minister’s presentation of the amendments and her wish to have a Bill that is technically well founded. I am not seeking to overturn the substance of the amendments, but I have two questions that perhaps go a little wider than they might seem. They are designed to get her assurance about the equality of position and equality of influence of the two people responsible for the process.
If a person is not a medical practitioner, but is some other person responsible for treatment, will the Minister assure us that their views will be treated in good faith and on an equal basis, and that there will be no question of what may be termed professional brow beating? I am sure that the various professionals will say that neither they nor their representative bodies ever wish to brow beat, but there must be an equality of treatment regarding those two persons, wherever they come from, in relation to the certification process.
My second question relates to amendment No. 45 and the issue of reporting, and what happens if a person is not a clinician but is in charge of the patient and their reporting. Can the Minister explain how such a report will deal adequately with matters of professional judgment relating to the clinical process itself? Presumably, as I think she has sought to explain to the Committee, a person with care of the patient will know them as well as anybody could, and they have a perfectly legitimate judgment to form and to pass on about the nature and progress of the treatment. Again, I do not think that we want a situation in which there is any inequity in treatment. I am referring here to my first comment about whether or not the person who is responsible for signing is or is not qualified in a particular discipline and also to whether they are producing a report that is not informed by the professional stamp of a registered clinician in that field. Those are minor comments, but it might be useful to have the Minister’s reassurances on them—or reflections on them if that is easier.