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Mental Health Bill [HL]

I support the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Howe. The Minister will remember from our debates some years ago a tragic case to which I referred him. It related to the very fact that one could not review within three months the drugs prescribed in a case. It caused a great deal of pain and suffering, not only to the patient, but to the patient’s family who were watching, because they were totally disempowered from altering the situation. We have moved a long way since I was in the DHSS, back in the early 1980s, when the current Act was formulated, and then passed, just after I left the department; but it would be sensible, in terms of the drugs bill and the needs of the patient and their family, to carry out a review long before three months. I support the 28-day period that my noble friend has proposed and I hope that the Minister will look at that extremely carefully, even if he cannot agree tonight, because there is a wide gap between today’s situation and the one that we faced way back in the early 1980s.