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Mental Health Bill [HL]

I should like to speak in support of both these amendments. As the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, has said, they aim to achieve the same purpose. In so doing, I should like to reflect for a few moments on my experience when I was a Member of another place. I recall being involved in two non-mental health areas or schemes which were extremely successful. One concerned raising money for a CT scanner to be based in a hospital in the region in which my then constituency was situated. It was what I think the press would call a rather sexy scheme. It was possible to raise the money quickly; it was a large amount of money—a seven-figure sum was put together, and the scanner was installed. Afterwards it transpired that not enough staff were available to operate the scanner at all the times when it was needed. That was a managerial problem which left one feeling a little disappointed with one’s achievement. The other organisation I was involved with was a truly wonderful place, a children’s hospice of which I was a trustee for a time. The hospice in question, perhaps like all children’s hospices, had no statutory funding at the time, but it appealed strongly to the local community. I recall going to one meeting of the trustees on a Saturday morning and being told that we had a serious problem. The serious problem was that we had raised so much money during the previous two months that other charities in the region were complaining bitterly and we had to put a brief moratorium on the raising of funds for the hospice. I move on to mental health provision. I was at one time involved in the starting-up of a small regional mental health charity which continues to provide services very expertly for a small number of mainly young people recovering from serious mental illness. When it started we were unable to obtain any statutory funding, and when I ceased to be a trustee at the beginning of last year it was still unable to obtain statutory funding and depended entirely on voluntary contributions, most of it raised from families with some experience of mental illness themselves. It was therefore a very different area for fundraising from either collecting the money for a CT scanner or for a children’s hospice. That experience confirmed my view, when comparing it with the others I have described, that mental health provision, particularly that for children and adolescents, is and remains a Cinderella service. Of course I accept, and no doubt the Minister will tell us, that the Government are doing what they can in many areas to provide better mental health services, particularly for children and young people. But as we heard the other day in what perhaps I may say with respect was an extremely eloquent speech by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, there are areas, particularly custodial settings, which remain not merely Cinderella areas, but are almost completely unclothed. The possibility of those suffering from poor mental health in prisons, especially young people in custodial institutions, reaching the relative ball of a decent child and adolescent mental health ward is still remote, as I am sure the noble Lord would agree. How do we remedy this? How do we, as a responsible society, show those who are mentally ill and their families that we are really taking this issue seriously? A simple and actually inexpensive way of doing it is to have some kind of charter of rights. What is set out in these amendments, taken together and separately, is in effect a very simple charter of rights. As has already been said so well by the noble Baroness in moving her Amendment No. 7, it represents good value for money. A comparison can be made here with the criminal justice system. In 1996, the Audit Commission produced a memorable report on crime committed by young people. It found that £1 invested in 1996 on preventing crime for young people saved approximately £7 later on, so that is money well spent. Exactly the same applies to mental health provision. Beds in acute mental hospitals are extremely expensive. When I visited one of the leading psychiatric hospitals in the country, I was told that for the most acute beds—this is at 2006 prices—the annual cost was £140,000. Occasionally it was double that because of the intensive nature of the care needed. Were we to have this kind of charter of rights for those suffering from serious mental illness, it is self-evident that we would save money in the long term. Are there precedents for this kind of charter? For those who are charged with crime, many of whom are guilty—statistically about half of them are found guilty if they contest their cases, and something like 95 per cent are guilty because most plead guilty in any event—we have the European Convention on Human Rights. This is a very simple document, a small pamphlet, which has been incorporated into United Kingdom law by the Human Rights Act 1998. Many of the people who commit crime have full control over what they are doing at the time they commit the crime. Although many are mentally ill, many are not. The wisest, cleverest, craftiest, most devious of criminals understand exactly what they are doing. In the area we are talking about, a very small number of people have a complete insight into what is happening to them. Some do, of course, but many do not. To introduce a charter of rights in this area is the least a civilised democracy should be offering to people who may be suffering from severe mental confusion. Furthermore, how many people who are sectioned today really understand what their rights are at the time when they are sectioned? I suspect that the true answer is almost none. How many of their families understand what their rights are when they are sectioned? The families become very savvy after a time but, to begin with, the answer is probably virtually none. If we are going to take one opportunity in a generation to introduce amendments to mental health law in this area of serious mental illness, one of the biggest changes we can make, which would be entirely beneficial and would set a new standard for the future, would be to incorporate a short charter of rights into the legislation.