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Mental Health Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 23: 23: Clause 15 , page 10, line 34, after ““recommendations),”” insert ““is amended as follows. ““(1)”” The noble Earl said: I shall also speak to Amendment No. 24. These amendments relate to Section 12 of the 1983 Act, which deals with the recommendations required from the medical practitioners before someone can be compulsorily admitted as a mental in-patient. There is a strongly held feeling that the existing provisions in Section 12(3) to (7) of the 1983 Act are complex and over-rigid, and that they have failed to keep up with the development of new patterns of service delivery. As a result they contain a number of anomalies. One could try to resolve those within the existing format, but that would probably entail considerable complication. The subsections are also concerned mainly with the relationship of the two doctors, and do not properly address the relationship with the approved mental health practitioner. This amendment would allow the drafting of regulations based on a set of principles, which would then govern the appropriate choice of assessors in each case. They would also allow, as the present Act does not, for a stipulation that at least one of the assessors must be completely impartial by virtue of having had no previous involvement with the patient or continuing responsibility for his case. I beg to move.