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Mental Health Bill [HL]

Well, I hope that this will not be an anodyne response. I listened to noble Lords as they graphically described some of the issues that face young people, and I endorse the comments about the problem of young people being inappropriately placed on adult wards. There is no question that, for many years, this has represented a major challenge for mental health services. It will carry on being a challenge, although I am disappointed that most noble Lords did not seek to reflect on some of the extra investment and improvements that were made to these services in recent years. I will come on to the actions that the Government have taken to improve services, given how noble Lords have described the problems. But the basic argument is that this is not the only time that your Lordships have sought to propose amendments that essentially talk about services. We have a real problem with amendments to the Bill that seek to specify the services to be given. I do not believe that is consistent with health service legislation. There are many practical issues that would follow if one singled out a particular service, put it in the Bill and said, ““That must be provided””, alongside all the other demands that are made on NHS services. Let us go through all the Oral Questions that have been tabled, and that are likely to be tabled over the next three months. There is a flavour about all of them; they all tend to say that the Government should do more to provide more services in this or that area. Of course, we seek to improve health services all the time, but there is a genuine issue about enshrining in legislation the provision of certain services for certain people in comparison with the general duty—