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Mental Health Bill [HL]

I speak to this amendment from personal experience of chairing an NHS trust with a large mental health component. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, will forgive me if I say that she has sometimes been critical of some of her colleagues. I, too, am about to be critical of some of her colleagues. I refer to a matter that worried me enormously. You would occasionally find consultant psychiatrists and registrars carrying out ““heroic”” treatment. Having found that a dose up to the formulary limit was not working, they gave more, and they talked of that with pride. That was one of the most disturbing matters that I came across in all my time walking round the locked and ordinary mental health service wards. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, is right to say that this measure must be included in the Bill. Guidance to the effect that this practice should not be followed has been in place now for many years, but the truth of the matter is that it is still done, and is commonly done. I have looked at the report on the death of David Bennett and listened to the evidence of Dr Kwame Mackenzie, who has studied this matter in detail and is worried that patients who are seen as big and black are still given larger doses. Dr Chandra Ghosh says that if the dose is not working it is illogical simply to give more and more of it. The more you look at that, the clearer it becomes that there is a real problem here. I do not believe that just having the measure in the Bill’s guidance will work. It needs to be in the Bill. I strongly support the noble Earl. I hope that the Minister will recognise that the provision needs to be stated very firmly in the legislation.