---

Mental Health Bill [HL]

I am astonished and wretchedly depressed by the Minister’s answer. As the noble Earl, Lord Howe, pointed out, legislation has twice been drafted including a provision of this kind. I do not see that a meeting with the Minister will ram this point home any further, but the amendment was introduced because it is clear that case management can be achieved only if the toolkit given to the judge contains the requisite tools. The Government are effectively saying precisely what judges find unattractive: fiddle your way around the edges of various provisions such as the Bail Act, and you may be able to find something into which we can fit a direction for a medical report of roughly this kind to be provided. That is not a good case management tool; it is like asking one to put in a screw with one’s teeth. I simply do not understand why the Government are so reluctant to adopt a simple measure that they have twice thought necessary. The whole point, which I tried to point out but which the Minister did not answer, is that, because of new sentencing provisions, issues of risk and dangerousness are now at the top of the agenda in a huge number of cases in which they never featured before. This amendment—probably unchanged, as it appears to me to be very full—would enable the judge, without fiddling around the corners of the Bail Act, to ensure that such reports as were necessary could be made available. I appeal to the Minister—and I welcome his willingness to take another look at this—to examine the issue again, because it seems to me and to others who have been dealing with this point, and indeed to the Joint Committee, that it cannot be dealt with without legislation. So with a sense of frustration that I had hoped to avoid so early in the afternoon as this, and with the fervent hope that the Minister will have another look at the matter, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.