Clause 31
Mental Health Bill [Lords]
10:00 am
Tim Boswell (Daventry, Conservative)
I very much agree with the remarks of the hon. Member for Norwich, North. The Committee should bear something else in mind: we are confident in general of the good faith of clinicians, but in circumstances in which the patient is, perhaps I should say, behaving badly, which we as lay people would find difficult to handle, and which may be difficult for some clinicians as well, we may have an underlying fear that something might be presented as an emergency when it was in fact a continuing clinical situation, requiring a more deliberate clinical decision, and that some reversions to ECT for a patient who was being violent might use the alleged emergency as a pretext for ECT. I think that the Committee’s overall message across all parties this morning is the less ECT the better—certainly not unless it is absolutely necessary or without due consideration and, if at all possible, consent. I concur with the sentiments already expressed.