Clause 24
Mental Health Bill [Lords]
10:30 am
Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing and Shoreham, Conservative)
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, as ever. There is a serious human rights question mark over the absence of age-appropriate treatment in the original Bill, and as he mentioned, inappropriate detention is subject to legal challenge. We know from the Minister’s earlier deliberations that she is keen that the Bill should not become a bean feast for lawyers,so the amendment is partly an attempt to finesse the new sections to give clarity to practitioners and avoid challenge in the courts.
New section 142D to the 1983 Act, under the heading “Clinical supervisor”, was originally added to the Bill to stress that if a patient is a minor under 18, the responsible clinician should be a child and adolescent mental health specialist. The point that we have been making for a long time now is that there is a shortage of child and adolescent mental health services within the mental health service and that children and young people can have particular needs that are distinct from those of adults. That is why we are concerned about the number of children and young people being placed in adult mental health acute wards.
In retrospect we feel that the wording of newsection 142D could be slightly restrictive. I know that the Government objected to our insistence that a CAMHS registered medical officer should always be used for a child. In circumstances in which a young person between the ages of 16 and 18 is placed appropriately on an adult ward, it would be more appropriate for them to have an adult RMO. The important thing is that the young person gets treatment as soon as possible and that the treatment is as appropriate as possible. Amendment No. 62 would therefore give some flexibility to the clinician undertaking an assessment of a minor’s needs in accordance with new section 142B, which was added in the House of Lords, and leave it up to him to consider whether the registered medical practitioner responsible for the minor’s care and treatment in hospital should be a child specialist.
We have listened to some of the Government’s objections, just as we hope they will listen to ours. We know that the Government want to ditch the whole clause in any case, so this issue will be something of a problem if they get their way on that. Nevertheless, we believe that clause 24 is a useful addition to the Bill. It brings useful safeguards for young people, and amending new section 142D would take away one of the Government’s objections as to constraining the clinician who will be responsible for the young person on an adult mental word. That is the purpose of this amendment. I hope that the Minister will take it in the positive, constructive spirit in which it is intended and feel able to accept it.