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Mental Health Bill [HL]

I too offer my hearty congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, on taking his place back at the Department of Health. It is a pleasure to see him again. I remember with fondness briefly offering him refuge in my office after his previous resignation in the House of Lords. Perhaps I may tell noble Lords a short story. Some years ago, a young female employee of Imperial College—she was a brilliant young scientist who was working on the ovary in my laboratory—ended up with a quite severe bipolar disorder, with alternating depression and mania. After a while, she became completely impossible at work and caused great disruption. She eventually gained inappropriate access to my laboratory, against the wishes and the instructions of the university, and caused mayhem. One morning, at about 6.30, she rang me at home in huge distress, crying and screaming that they had come to section her. I said to her, ““Hang on, just calm down. Speak to me in a calm voice and, above all, speak to the people who you think have come for you in a calm voice””. She had great difficulty in doing that. What she saw as an attack on her, that complete ignorance and the notion that she had no autonomy at all in her state, had a massively bad impact on her health at the time, and on her attitude towards psychiatrists for a long time afterwards and to her subsequent care. Only with the greatest of difficulties could I persuade the medical people there who did not know her and who had come to section her to wait until I could arrive at her house to intercede on her behalf and to offer guarantees. Of course her behaviour had been unacceptable to the university, of course she was at risk of damaging herself, but her autonomy was easily lost in the culture which was present. I know my noble friend Lord Warner has said that it is massively difficult to change the drafting of a Bill if you have a preamble of this sort beforehand, but if that results in an injustice and in something which makes the law less adequate, it may be none the less necessary for parliamentary draftsmen to work not just for two wet days—if it takes six months, it is still worth getting the law in order. I want to congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Howe, on introducing this amendment. It may not be the final wording but it seems to me to be the absolute basis for something which must be in the minds of the carers when they consider sectioning a patient. This young PhD student is now a brilliant doctor of philosophy, working not in this country any more but in another part of the United Kingdom highly successfully. It was touch and go that her career was not permanently damaged because of the result on her health, and I beg the Minister to consider what he could do to try and come to an agreement to put these principles into a position where they might be used.