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Mental Health Bill [HL]

As I was getting ready to talk about this amendment, I was taken back many years—more than I care to remember—to a time when I was quite young. I was walking down a street in America where a lady was behaving in a very loud fashion: she was preaching in a hectoring manner. I was very small and found it quite frightening. The adults with me said, ““It’s okay. She’s just a bit crazy and that’s what she does””. I had forgotten that incident until about five years ago when I was reading a biography of Hillary Clinton. Mrs Clinton is a lady who brings about quite extreme reactions but I was taken with her because, when she was a young lawyer in Arkansas, she was noted for things such as driving many hundreds of miles to defend ladies who ““preached a bit crazy”” in the street on the grounds that they were allowed to do that. I was also reminded of that early incident about two years ago when I was walking through Brixton and came across a lady preaching very loudly in the middle of the street. All those things came back to me as I read through the briefings for this Bill, because what we and society decide is acceptable and ““just a bit crazy”” or something that should bring someone under compulsory powers may be subjective matters involving time, place and context. That is why it is important that we have this debate. There is always an element of subjectivity in any assessment or analysis of a person’s behaviour. As the Minister said earlier, the 1983 Act provided a fine balance between compulsory powers and rights of representation for individuals. That was a much more balanced piece of legislation than that which we have before us now and yet we have had report after report showing that even that legislation, tuned as it was at the time, has a disproportionate effect on some communities because behaviour is interpreted in wholly different ways. Why is it important to have an amendment like this? The joint scrutiny committee concluded that the wider the definition of ““mental disorder””, the greater the need for exclusions. I am sure that the Minister will talk about the need for clinicians to have scope to employ their judgment. I do not believe that these amendments will in any way compromise that. The Mental Health Commission, in its evidence to the joint scrutiny committee, said: "““For the law to be of value—to patients, State administrators, mental health professionals, the police, the courts or the Tribunal—its meaning cannot rest upon the discretion of those working within its framework. We do not find it difficult to envisage the inappropriate use, however well meant, of mental health legislation for non-medical purposes of social control””." Therefore, it is important, in these very difficult areas of sexual behaviour, illegal or disorderly acts or cultural, religious or political beliefs, that we, as Parliament, set boundaries within which we expect our clinicians to make their decisions. It is beholden on us to ensure that there is a correct balance between the width of the definition of mental disorder and the extent to which compulsion can be brought to bear on patients with specific exclusions. We should support the amendment.