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Mental Health Bill [HL]

My long-standing and considerable affection for the noble Baroness, Lady Knight, is equalled by my admiration for her ability to touch sometimes upon real and important issues. She has done exactly that today, and I am sure that I speak for everyone on these Benches when I say that we support the purpose and spirit of her amendment. This Chamber is full of lawyers and other experts, such as doctors, who tend towards the theoretical. The noble Baroness tends to avoid the theoretical by highlighting the real, the practical and the human—the actuality of situations—and she has done that powerfully today. What the noble Baroness has said has been evidence-based in every instance. The law is experienced in cases in which people refuse to take food, because hospitals have, from time to time, brought actions in the High Court to ensure that they are safe in their decision to compel patients to take food. The best-known case is that of Ian Brady, who was refusing to take food, and Ashworth Hospital was authorised to force feed him as part of his therapy. But, in law, we do not have anything like the same experience of actions that a hospital has pursued regarding its failure to give food to a patient, because it is usually too late. As the noble Lord, Lord Patten, reminded us in another powerful speech, there are already international obligations to provide food to patients; the new United Nations convention to which he referred is the latest, but we have heard also about Article 2, one of the most fundamental provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights. There is a right to be fed and there is a right to expect those treating a person in hospital to feed that person. Those of us who have elderly relatives—in my case, I am happy to say, an extremely feisty, determined and independent mother in her 90s—know that determined elderly people like her, who value their independence, still live alone and look after themselves, are afraid of what will happen to them if they go into hospital. When they are in their own homes, they feel very independent and are very capable. But sometimes, when an elderly person of a similar age has been taken to a hospital due to an episode of illness, they can appear to be completely disoriented and they feel utterly disempowered. The noble Baroness’s amendment would ensure that we could say to very elderly people, ““You don’t need to be afraid to go into hospital, because you have some rights””. Those rights would be there, not only under theoretical international obligations, but would be written down, either in statutory form or in codes of practice. I would like to hear the Minister say that the Government recognise that there is a problem, that from time to time some very bad cases appear, as described by the noble Baroness, and that it would be right, somewhere in the framework—whether in the Act or in codes of practice—to ensure that it is made clear to clinicians at all levels that potentially vulnerable patients cannot be left to starve and that they have the right to food and/or liquid—bearing in mind the problems expertly aired by the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. I hope that the Minister will support at least some of the principles behind the amendment.