Amendment made: No. 50, page 44, line 14, leave out 'or different areas' and insert

'(including different provision for different areas and different provision for different descriptions of patient)'.— [Ms Rosie Winterton.]

Order for Third Reading read.

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

The Mental Health Act 1983 —[ Interruption. ]

Order. I apologise for interrupting the right hon. Lady, but it is quite unfair to the Minister at the Dispatch Box if conversations are going on in the Chamber. Hon. Members should stay if they wish to listen to the debate, or depart quietly.

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

The Mental Health Act 1983 is primarily about the circumstances in which people with a serious mental health problem can be detained and treated without their consent to protect themselves or others from harm. Not surprisingly, this is a sensitive matter, so any Bill to amend that Act is likely to provoke much debate and controversy.

It might be helpful if I set out why the Government want to update our mental health legislation. We want to ensure that people with serious mental health problems receive the treatment that they need to protect themselves and others from harm. We need to recognise that the world has moved on since 1983. Many more people can now be treated in the community, rather than in hospitals, so the use of compulsory powers should reflect that. Professional demarcation lines have changed since 1983, and functions are now being carried out by people with the right skills and experience, rather than individuals from particular professions. Again, our legislation should change to reflect that fact. We also want to strengthen patient safeguards, which includes tackling human rights incompatibilities.

The Government began their review of mental health legislation in 1998. Since then, reforming the legislation has been the subject of wide-ranging debate, which has been enormously helpful. We have listened to relevant stakeholders and made many changes as a result of discussions with them. The decision to proceed with an amendment Bill rather than the 2004 draft Bill was a response to the recommendations of the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee. I take this opportunity to thank that Committee for all the work that it did.

We have had long and helpful discussions in the House on the Bill before us. The discussions in Committee were particularly helpful—

Superb.

Absolutely. I am glad that I was able to table a range of amendments on Report covering issues that were raised in the other place and in Committee. I am pleased that we were able to accept the excellent amendments from my hon. Friends the Members for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and for Bridgend (Mrs. Moon), which were supported by many other members of the Committee. I am glad that the Opposition parties also gave their support to a number of the amendments that we tabled. I am thinking particularly of the amendments on age-appropriate accommodation and, crucially, those on victims and on advocacy.

There has been much debate on other amendments that the Government did not accept. I hope that I have been able to explain why we have not accepted them, although I am not sure that I convinced everybody on the Opposition Benches of the merits of our case.

This could be the last intervention that I make on the Bill. One of the amendments that the Minister did not accept in Committee was the request to have people with autistic spectrum disorders added to the exemptions in the Bill. The National Autistic Society, of which I am a vice-president, writes today about the Report stage, saying that people with autistic spectrum disorders continue to be detained inappropriately, and the society believes that their situation will be worsened by the Bill, not improved by it.

We discussed autism not only in Committee, where the hon. Lady tabled a number of amendments, but when I attended the all-party group on autism. In addition, in discussions that I had until Friday last week, my hon. Friend Mrs. Dean put forward arguments from the National Autistic Society. The meeting of the all-party group showed some of the divergence of opinion, even among those representing people with autism. I am thinking particularly of one of the Opposition Members who questioned why we were even considering some of the changes that the hon. Lady suggested. It is a complicated subject but I was glad that we were able to have the debate in Committee. I am more than happy to continue to look at how we can assist on issues such as the code of practice, to make sure that services are developed appropriately. As I said, I hope that the amendments that I tabled on supervised community treatment, the conditions that can be applied and how they will be applied will give some reassurance to those who are concerned about SCT.

Where we have not been able to accept amendments, we are trying to use non-legislative means to tackle the issues raised, such as the nearest relative provisions, which were mentioned by my hon. Friend Lynne Jones, and places of safety, which were also mentioned today. We will continue to work on those matters, although it was not necessarily right to include them in the Bill.

I thank the many organisations that have worked with us in developing some of the Government amendments. In particular, I thank YoungMinds and the children's commissioner—an office that, as I have said, is now called 11 Million.

Sir 11 Million.

Indeed. We have also had some very constructive dialogue with the new coalition of mental health organisations, particularly about the role of the responsible clinician.

We have tried to continue to engage with Members of the other place throughout the discussions. I pay particular tribute to Lord Williamson for his help in developing the age-appropriate services. As I said, our discussions in this House have followed on from many of the discussions in the other House, which have informed our debates. I believe that although we have not been able to respond to all the concerns raised there, we have been able to respond to very many of them.

I should like quickly to mention the Making Decisions Alliance and all that it has contributed to the development of the new safeguards for those deprived of their liberty in their best interests. We sometimes forget that the Bournewood changes are a very important part of the legislation, about which I know that two Opposition Members are particularly concerned.

I should also mention all the work put into the analysis of the Bill by the Joint Committee on Human Rights and my hon. Friend Mr. Dismore. Of course, I should also thank the officials who have supported me so effectively throughout the Bill's passage. I hope that hon. Members would say that the officials have been open to discussion and approachable to Members of the House if they have been needed to give other information. I also thank all members of the Committee. We had an excellent debate with participation from all sides, and we were able to explore many of the issues very thoroughly.

I want to stress how much we want to continue to work with a wide range of stakeholders in implementing the Bill once it receives Royal Assent. I know that many have already been involved in developing the code of practice, and we would certainly like further input from all those with an interest, including Members of the House. Many have also been involved in drafting the secondary legislation, such as measures on new professional roles. Again, we want to work with all concerned to make sure that we get this right.

All told, I think that the Bill that we are—I hope—about to send back to the other place is a significant improvement on the one that came to this House, although we have been able to reflect some of the discussions there in the amendments that we have been considering over the past two days. I hope that Members of the other place will feel that we have taken on board their concerns and responded to the points that they made, as well as to the points made in Committee. I have no hesitation in commending the Bill to the House and wishing it a speedy completion.

I echo the Minister's words in saying that the Bill has provoked much debate and controversy, which I think is probably something of an understatement. It has been a long haul; as she said, nine years have gone by. I think that I have been responsible for the matter on the Opposition Benches for five of those nine years, and that she has had responsibility for a little longer. [ Interruption. ] It feels like we have been at it for a long time on the Mental Health Bill. We have been through two draft Bills, the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee, this Bill, the Richardson expert committee and countless meetings, briefings and debates with various members of the Mental Health Alliance and others.

I pay tribute to the hon. Members on both sides of the House who have contributed. We had a lively debate in Committee—it was described as "helpful and superb"—and I also thank the Bill team, who were helpful.

The Mental Health Alliance is a big alliance that formed because of the Bill. Whether or not we agree with everything that it has said, it has had an enormous input into the Bill. We must remember the enormous amount of good work that many of the organisations that form the Mental Health Alliance do on behalf of thousands of people up and down the country every day of the week. We need a Bill that helps those organisations, because they look after some of the most vulnerable members of society.

I pay tribute to the work that was done in the Lords. I disagree with the Minister about whether this Bill is better than the one that came from the Lords. An enormous amount of professional expertise was applied to the Bill in the Lords, and I think that Members of the other place may have a few things to say when it returns to them.

I pay tribute to the many professionals who day in, day out do a difficult job looking after people with a mental illness. Again, our duty is to make their job easier and to clarify the law under which they work, which has always been our intention. I agree with the Minister that there is a need to update the legislation. The 1983 Act was largely based on the 1959 Act, so it is almost 50 years since the underlying principle of the legislation was updated.

There have been advances in mental health treatment, mental health law and the flexibility with which we deal with patients. Rightly, we must respect people's lifestyles: we have moved away from the asylum system; the professions involved have changed; and there are human rights incompatibilities. All along, we have said that we need a Mental Health Bill, but we need the right Mental Health Bill.

I welcome the Minister's success in getting the Government to move a substantial distance in a number of areas. She took note of the record six defeats in the Lords on substantial points of great principle. We welcome what we have seen on Report in the past two days on age-appropriate treatment. I also echo the Minister's tribute to Lord Williamson's amendments, which started the process.

As I have said, we have made good moves on introducing victims' rights into the Bill. I welcome the compromise on treatability and pay tribute to Chris Bryant for the intelligent, balanced and assiduous way in which he introduced it. We have removed some of the more objectionable and unworkable parts of community treatment orders, not least the provision on abstaining from particular behaviours, and we have linked CTOs to medical treatment.

However, we have not gone far enough. The Bill still fails to take into account the international evidence, which the Government commissioned. It is still far too open-ended, and as such we think that it provides too much of a deterrent for people to engage with mental health services. We are still at odds with the Government about the roles of various "responsible clinicians", which may be open to legal challenge. Furthermore, inconsistencies remain with the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and the renewal of detention following initial sectioning. We still have serious problems about the definitions and the exclusions. It is unfortunate that the debate on that was truncated, because those are substantial points of disagreement that go to the heart of the Bill.

Unfortunately, we have had no movement on impaired decision making. The new clause was meant as an antidote to the stigma that surrounds mental illness, which concerns us all. Some of the Minister's references to high-profile cases, such as the Michael Stone case, were unfortunate. She mentioned the Michael Stone case today and in Committee.

indicated dissent.

If the Minister reads the record tomorrow, she will see that she mentioned the Michael Stone case. Without trying to single out one case, what happened in that case, as in so many other such tragic incidents, is that the system fell down—

rose—

Before I give way to the Minister, I should say that if she did not mention the Michael Stone case, I may have confused it with the John Barrett case. She has mentioned the Michael Stone case before. What is common to all those cases is that they show a failure of the system and the services in not being there to pick up those people when they needed to be picked up.

The hon. Gentleman is quite wrong to say that I have mentioned the Michael Stone case—I have not. I mentioned the Michael Barrett inquiry—I am sorry, the John Barrett inquiry—because one of its conclusions was that the only way that it would have been possible to ensure that John Barrett complied with treatment as an out-patient would have been through supervised community treatment, which was not available at the time. That is why we believe that supervised community treatment is important.

I entirely take the Minister's point. I think that we are confusing Michaels and Johns; if that is my fault, I apologise. Nevertheless, whatever reference has been made to community treatment orders, there was in both cases a failure by the system in relation to somebody who tried to engage with it, and a failure by the services to provide a safety net and to move in at the appropriate time.

In the debate on impaired decision making, I was particularly concerned about the fact that the definition of "untreatable" involves people being turned away from services. That suggests that the Bill is being used as a substitute for the lack of appropriate services and deficiencies in the mental health service as it stands. It confuses availability and access to services with the need for coercion in order to ensure that patients accept services that are offered. As Dr. George Szmukler, dean of the Institute of Psychiatry has said,

"The government has objected that this amendment might leave out people who need treatment. It is alarming to think that the state has reached the point that everyone who is deemed to 'need treatment' should be detained if they disagree."

Access to treatment seems to have become entirely entwined with the legislative ability to subject to section and compulsorily treat a patient. Is not that a rather terrible indictment of the state of mental health services?

The Minister has admitted that under her mental health system she would turn people away if she could not subject them to compulsory treatment. We seem to have reached a stage analogous with somebody who has heart disease, with blocked arteries, presenting at a hospital and being told, "You must either have a heart transplant or no treatment at all." It should not be all or nothing; it should be coercion and sectioning only in the most extreme circumstances. The Minister seems to be proceeding under the highly flawed and worrying premise that if someone cannot be sectioned he will not get the treatment. That is wrong—it should not be the case under mental health law—but the Minister is labouring under that misapprehension.

It is interesting to note that the Minister dismissed out of hand the situation that will pertain, for example, in the constituency of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath—that of the incoming Prime Minister. Under her assumptions and analysis, the constituents of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath are being allowed to commit suicide because of impaired decision making, yet she has no evidence to support it. Has the incoming Prime Minister said, "Under impaired decision making, there is a serious problem with my constituents being more susceptible to suicide"? I very much doubt that there has been, yet the Minister is going to create a difference between mental health law on either side of the border. Clearly, Scotland has produced much more enlightened mental health legislation, and that will throw up serious differences between how patients are treated on either side of the border.

The hon. Gentleman has consistently failed to answer one question. He says that there will be people who would not need to be detained because they did not have impaired judgment, but he has never given the figure for how many people he thinks it acceptable to turn away from services saying, "We're not going to treat you either because you are a danger to yourself or a danger to others." What is that figure?

The Minister is trying to repeat our previous, truncated debated. Her logic and analysis imply that, in the incoming Prime Minister's constituency, under the Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003, which contains impaired decision-making provisions, people are much more susceptible to suicide. There is no empirical evidence for that.

We are worried because there is a significant risk that the Bill will undo much of the good work in improving mental health services and the relationships between service users and providers. There is a genuine risk of investing in a new regime of compulsion, which will have a counter-productive effect, alienating rather than engaging with people with mental health problems and possibly increasing rather than reducing patient and public safety. Patients could well slip under the clinical radar, and we do not want that to happen. We want a Bill with which we can work, with which clinicians can work and with which patients can work and engage. We want a Bill that reassures the public that their safety is being protected, and balanced with the liberty and medical care of others.

We need a Bill that is fit for the 21st century. We are almost there, but the measure, which now returns to the Lords, still contains too much that is objectionable and will deter people from presenting. We cannot, therefore, support it as it stands. I urge my colleagues to vote against it, but in doing that, I hope that the Government will take our concerns on board, engage constrictively with the Lords and go that bit further so that we can have a Mental Health Act 2007 of which we can all be proud. I look forward to considering the measure again when the Government have taken our concerns on board and it returns from the Lords.

I agree with the Minister that we have held a series of excellent discussions on Second Reading, in Committee and yesterday and today. Every member of the Committee took part in the debate to a greater or lesser extent—I believe that that is unusual. In my admittedly limited experience, the contributions from hon. Members of all parties in Committee were of an extremely high standard.

Opposition suggestions and amendments have brought about changes and Back-Bench amendments have also been adopted. That has improved the Bill. Unlike Tim Loughton, I believe that the measure is an improvement on the current position. It is not perfect and other improvements can be made, but it is better than the Bill that was introduced a few weeks ago.

The measure will return to the other place and I hope that their Lordships will at least recognise that it has not been rammed through the House—far from it. Careful consideration has been made of every point—some might say ad nauseam. I hope that their Lordships will pay some heed to that.

On a final, personal note, tonight marks the end of some five years' involvement with scrutinising the Bill's predecessor and serving on the Committee that considered the current measure. There is therefore a sadness, but I believe that we have produced something better than we had previously. I recognise that there has been much constructive working among many people who are in the Chamber this evening to achieve that.

After a long journey, we have reached an interesting juncture. The Bill arrived in the Commons surrounded by controversy, heavily amended and cloaked in colourful rhetoric. Some said that it was simply a Home Office measure, which was intent on coercing the mentally ill, an open charter for compulsory medication or a means of handing out psychiatric ASBOs, likely to terrify and worsen patients' conditions. Others claimed that it was the last chance to prevent an epidemic of killing by deranged people and the only way to stop psychopaths freely walking the streets.

Some peopled the world with psychiatrists twitching to incarcerate the vulnerable, the eccentric and the politically deviant. Others spoke of a profession turning its back on the troublesome and the homicidal. However, in the Commons, the Committee stage, secluded in a Committee Room, reduced the temperature. Points were probed and some small progress was made. Subsequent off-stage meetings accelerated the process and I hope that Report has moved things on further.

Looking at our debate as a whole, a bystander might wryly note the fact that each side quotes the Scottish Act from time to time like scripture, but only the bits they really like; that each side quotes experts, but only the ones they really like and dismisses the others as "so-called"; that each side demands evidence for opposing claims, but not always for its own—as, for example, with our discussion of compulsory treatment orders; and that each side quotes opinion surveys, but only the ones that suit. Personally, I have difficulty in any case involving complex matters in believing that the majority are necessarily right. I sometimes have difficulty in believing that even the Liberal Democrats are necessarily right—[Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."]

Suspicion about intentions and fear of professionals abusing power have been persistent traits in this debate and in the briefings, which perhaps indicates that there is more widespread paranoia around than hitherto. Unusually—the Bill has been unusual in this respect—the vast bulk of Opposition amendments tabled both in this and the other place have been skilfully drafted by a few but very influential external hands, who helpfully handed many ready-framed amendments to MPs—a kind of Blue Peter model of legislation.

As a result, we have got concessions from the Government—very welcome concessions, but possibly not enough—on children, advocacy and treatability. In other areas, the Government have stood their ground and we will have to go a little bit further. Where our arguments are good—they will be put in the other place—we would expect concessions and not stubbornness. Ultimately, this is not for any of us a political issue. It is about putting good legislation in place on a very difficult subject, which will last for decades. Whether it is done through truculence in the Lords or Socratic questioning in the Commons, we can secure better legislation— [ Interruption. ] Any philosophical reference will usually do for me.

The reality is that the Bill has had a poor birth and a rather troubled adolescence, but it might just mature into stable legislation.

I thank the Minister and congratulate her on two things. First, she has brought the legislation forward in an open and transparent manner. She has sought to work with people from all backgrounds who have wanted in good faith to contribute to producing a better Bill. She has done a very fine job on that. Secondly, she has done a good job by listening to Labour Back Benchers. It is very rare for the Government to accept amendments from their Back Benchers, and it is quite nerve-racking when an amendment has been tabled, but one is not sure whether the Minister is going to accept it, because it makes one think of having to vote with the Opposition against the Government.

It is an important point for parliamentary democracy and how this House works with the other place to note that it is right for the Government to seek to put things right in this House rather than wait for the other House to do business down the other end of the building. I pay an enormous tribute to the Minister and to the whole team who have contributed to that.

The Minister was right to say that the Bill team has been magnificent. I confess that I sought its advice on many occasions and it was always forthright with me. I would also like to pay tribute, as would many of my hon. Friends, to my hon. Friend Dr. Naysmith, who over the past few years has steered many of us on the Government side in the right direction and has personally devoted a great deal of time and energy to the Bill. The quality of the Bill tonight is in no small measure due to my hon. Friend's contribution.

I personally believe that the Mental Health Alliance, with which I have had some sturdy rows on occasion, has provided a very helpful service to the House. I have not agreed with it on everything, but I believe that it has sought to introduce amendments to improve the Bill according to their lights. We often forget that the lobbyists who come to our doors are every bit as important a part of the political and democratic process as are we who have been elected to sit here. We would simply not be able to do our work without them.

I pay a sort of tribute to Mr. Grumpy, commonly known as Tim Loughton. Perhaps he should be known as Mr. John Lewis, as he is never knowingly understated. He has on occasion been non-partisan, however, as well as being conciliatory and generous to the Minister and, for those moments, I am enormously grateful to him.

Mental health and mental ill health are still barely understood by the public, and the stigma is enormous for many people. We still find it too difficult to intervene early enough to prevent some people from getting to the stage of detention; we need to do far more in that regard. I am proud that we have a Government who have put a significant amount of extra cash into mental health services so that we can start to do that, but much more needs to be done. In particular, there is a shortage of talking therapies, especially in working class constituencies around the land. We need to put that right. We also need to do more work on the relationship between the criminal justice system and the mental health system, because there are too many women and men with mental health problems in prison who should probably be receiving mental health service support.

We also need to do a great deal more to ensure that the culture of our mental health services does not exclude those who were not born in this country or whose cultural and religious references are not the traditional ones on which this country was founded. We need further to explore improving our mental health services so that they can cope with the many people arriving here who want to work, who do work and who contribute a great deal to our economy, but who sometimes find that our cultural milieu does not help their own mental health.

Chris Bryant paid me an entirely unmerited compliment in Committee. I should like to reciprocate by paying him an entirely merited compliment on the general tone of his comments tonight and on his perspicacity and persistence in putting through his amendment on treatability. The amendment has wide support and is a great credit to him, and I am glad that we have got that one secured.

If I do not vote for the Bill tonight, it will not be because I oppose changes in mental health legislation, but because I regard the Bill in the form in which we are now delivering it to another place as work in progress rather than work completed. My hon. Friend Tim Loughton has detailed our continuing objections to it, and I would like briefly to remind the House of them.

The first relates to people with impaired decision making, and I must point out the anomaly not only between English and Scottish law but between the treatment of physical and mental illness. The treatment of a person with a physical illness who has mental capacity and who withholds consent for treatment would, in law, constitute assault, but such treatment of a person with mental illness will be sanctioned by legislation. However strong the arguments for administering such treatment might be, this is a difficult principle to breach.

I am also concerned about the excessive scope of community treatment orders and the nature of the exclusions that we have debated over the past two days. Functionally, my concern is for the people who are not represented among those joining the debate, namely, people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, or with different levels of sophistication or differing abilities to stick up for themselves. The hon. Member for Rhondda touched on this issue a moment ago. Such people might find themselves enmeshed in the system. All the conventional measurements in relation to the involvement of people from black and minority ethnic—BME—backgrounds suggest that they are clearly being very badly served.

I am also worried about the absence or patchiness of treatment facilities in some parts of the country. We cannot necessarily legislate to put that right, although we have done so in relation to age-appropriate treatment. I want to pay tribute to the Minister, who made some good changes in Committee. I would not wish to caricature the Government's position at all in this regard, but I do have those outstanding reservations.

Behind those reservations are two considerations. The first is that there is some kind of ghost in the machine that we have not yet fully eliminated. It is the ghost of control systems, as opposed to the treatment, support and protection of minorities and people with real difficulties and sensitivities in their lives. My strong feeling is that if we are worried about people with mental health problems in the community, the best way to approach the issue is positively and at source through appropriate treatment, rather than seeking to get out of the problems by saying how toughly we can control them. That is not to say that there should be no controls. Of course there should be controls, and they have been hallowed in statute for many years, but they need to be weighed very carefully in each case.

Finally, let me make an appeal to the Minister. I think I can do that on the basis of the constructive relationship that we enjoyed during the passage of the Mental Capacity Act 2005, and subsequently in the context of some its implementation. The Minister has shown an exemplary readiness for dialogue. During the passage of the 2005 Act, with which I was more intimately concerned than I am with this Bill, progress seemed impossible at one stage. There was a time constraint, there were huge differences in views, and there were passionate concerns about such issues as euthanasia. Nevertheless, we somehow managed to work ourselves into an almost complete consensus by the end. We have not yet done that with the Mental Health Bill, which is why I shall not be supporting it tonight.

I think that we are nearly there. I think that if Ministers are prepared to respond to concerns expressed in another place, to respond again when they return to us—as no doubt they will—and to iron out the remaining issues, we shall have a Bill that reflects our power to debate and, above all, our power to engage with this most sensitive group of people, to whom we all feel that we have an obligation and whom we need to serve by getting the legislation right.

I, too, congratulate the Minister. In some respects, this has been a very difficult Bill. Some of the arguments have been separated only by a thin line, which was exemplified by those that we heard today on new clause 12. It has certainly been a difficult Bill for the Minister to steer through the House, but she has done it with courage and professionalism, and has presented her arguments with great clarity.

I want to make it clear that the Committee was not full of people who were always going to agree with the Government. Some of the awkward squad were there. I include myself in that: I was prepared to challenge the Government, although on this occasion I have agreed wholeheartedly with the Government line. I am very pleased to be able to say that. I believe that the addition of the advocacy measure to the final Bill is a great step forward. I was a little surprised that it was not included initially, but I am very pleased that it is there now.

I must tell all those who have deluged me, and other Committee members, with briefings that there has just been too much of it. It has jammed my e-mail inbox, and filled my sacks of mail. I have a confession to make: I have not read it all. I think that there is a message there. Why should we receive a briefing from the Mental Health Alliance and, at the same time, briefings from all its members? I am grateful for the briefings, but I ask those who sent them please to send us a few less in future.

During the Bill's passage, I have detected a tension between psychiatrists and psychologists. The Government are trying to build a modern mental health service in which all professionals work in harmony and to the same end—to help the patients who benefit from the service. I hope that the professionals will listen to that message.

At the beginning of the Committee stage I felt like a member of the Stasi, being accused of wanting to lock people up for having strange religious practices, political views or sexual deviancies of one kind or another. In fact, I felt—and now believe wholeheartedly—that the Minister was trying to strike a balance between liberty and human rights on the one hand, and on the other the need to recognise that there are people out there who can benefit from modernised mental health services. People with serious personality disorders, for instance, can benefit from the application of appropriate treatment, with a consequent saving of lives that might otherwise be lost as a result of both homicides and suicides.

My hon. Friend has clearly set out all the reasons why the Bill should be voted for. Does he agree that if the Opposition vote against it, they will be voting against advocacy, victims' rights and looking after people in the community, and thereby put at risk patients' and public safety?

The Opposition will vote against it, which is sad. As with all proposed legislation, this Bill will be proved to be successful or not when its provisions are put into practice. I hope that it will benefit the patients for whom it is intended.

I thank the Minister for her generosity in spending time with me when I have asked to see her during the course of the Bill's proceedings. I also particularly wish to thank the Mental Health Alliance. In my view, it did not send too much material, but put a lot of work into supporting Members who were dealing with the Bill. I also thank the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the National Autistic Society for helping me with my representations on the Bill.

I look forward to working with the Minister on the code of practice. There are still problems to do with people with autistic spectrum disorders. There is a problem in that people with autism are detained inappropriately in unsuitable settings and for far too long. I hope that the code of practice will address that.

Finally, let me raise again an issue that I mentioned at the end of my speech on Second Reading, and which has not been touched on today. Early intervention with appropriate levels of resources is the answer to mental health issues. It seems incongruous to me that the Minister should suggest that by voting against the Bill the Opposition will be responsible for putting patients at risk.

indicated assent.

The Minister is nodding her head, but apparently that is okay in Scotland.

I have no trouble in supporting the Government and voting for the Bill, as it is a substantial improvement on the current legislation. I thank Members of all parties here and in the other place, as well as those who have briefed and supported us in our discussions, for their work in helping to bring about the current state of play in respect of the Bill. I particularly thank my right hon. Friend the Minister. As other Members have mentioned, she has been very open and has bent over backwards to discuss the Bill frankly. I also thank her for her attendance at meetings of the all-party group on mental health.

The Bill has been much improved since it first appeared many years ago. Much of the angst that we have experienced in the past eight or nine years could have been alleviated had greater regard been paid to the expert committee that reported in 1999 or 2000. Too much emphasis was placed on public safety as a result of some tragic cases that were in the news at that time.

I tried to intervene on the Minister on the subject of impaired decision making. If we are to protect the public and reduce the tragically high number of suicides that result from mental illness, people must receive the treatment that they need as early as possible. The effectiveness of our mental health services is judged not by the number of people who are subject to detention and sectioning, but by our effectiveness at getting services to them when they need them. I am still disappointed that the Government were unable to accept the new clause on impaired decision making.

Yesterday, there was some consternation when my hon. Friend Meg Hillier suggested that there might be more mental health Bills. However, we have not been able to discuss yesterday or today new clause 1, which would give people suffering from a mental health problem a right to assessment, and we still do not have rights to a comprehensive care plan on discharge. There are issues that we need to address beyond this Bill to ensure that we get excellent services to people when they need them. The Government have done much to invest in mental health services, but I am afraid that it is still a Cinderella service. That is the—

It being Ten o'clock, Mr. Deputy Speaker put the Question already proposed from the Chair, pursuant to Order [18 June].

Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time:—

The House divided: Ayes 272, Noes 202.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Bill read the Third time, and passed, with amendments.