Clause 32
Mental Health Bill [Lords]
3:45 pm
Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing and Shoreham, Conservative)
The Minister did not want to respond to any of the interventions that she so generously took, in which she was asked whether her proposals were based on any research or empirical evidence on the impact that CTOs may have on homicide, suicide and hospital readmission rates. If the Government are trying to propose such a radical, powerful new addition to mental health legislation, it is absolutely essential that they have the evidence on which to base their proposals.
Not once has the Minister produced any evidence to prove that community treatment orders are necessary. We know that that is because there is not any evidence. We know that the Government tried to find some evidence. We know that last January the Government commissioned the Institute of Psychiatry to engage in the most far-reaching research project on the international experience of community treatment orders in those jurisdictions that have experience of them. The report was delivered to the Government last August. The Government were not happy with its conclusions so they told the institute to go away and think again. The authors did and, not surprisingly, there was little change to the proposals. The Government then decided to sit on the report.
Despite all the pleadings by the Government that it was down to peer reviews and various other things, and after the Government completely sidelined any freedom of information requests, they published, under duress, their report on the international effectiveness of community treatment orders the day after the House of Lords finished their deliberations on the Bill. It was a shameful suppression of key evidence that was absolutely integral to this important piece of legislation.