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Mental Health Bill [HL]

moved AmendmentNo. 29: 29: After Clause 20 , insert the following new Clause— ““Resolving disputes as to receiving hospitals (1) The 1983 Act is amended as follows. (2) In section 35 (remand to hospital for report on accused’s mental condition), after subsection (4), insert— ““(4A) Where a court has remanded an accused person under this section and hospital trusts cannot agree to which hospital a person should be sent, the Secretary of State shall resolve the dispute.”” (3) In section 36 (remand of accused person to hospital for treatment), after subsection (3), insert— ““(3A) Where a court has remanded an accused person under this section and hospital trusts cannot agree to which hospital a person should be sent, the Secretary of State shall resolve the dispute.”””” The noble Lord said: This amendment, with which we are considering Amendment No. 30—and I have got that right this time—deals with common situations that arise in courts. It is a very common experience, and one that causes massive frustration and anger to judges, that disputes can arise as to which hospital an offender or person held on remand should be sent. Typically, as the committee commented at paragraph 263 about whether medium or maximum security is required, if the parties cannot reach agreement, in particular if the medical people involved and the hospitals cannot reach agreement, there is currently no means of resolving the matter. In the era when the celebrated Crown Court judge Sir Robin David QC was the senior judge on the Cheshire part of the Wales and Chester circuit of blessed memory, of which my noble friend Lord Hooson used to be a very distinguished leader, that judge used to refuse time and time again to pass sentence on a person appearing before him because he demanded that someone should decide who was going to provide the medical report. But sometimes Sir Robin and other judges—and I cite him only as a very distinguished example—used to be driven into the situation in which they were forced to makewhat they regarded as an inappropriate disposal, particularly by sentencing someone to imprisonment. The Joint Committee recommended that where a court wishes to send an offender or person on remand with a mental disorder to a hospital and hospital trusts cannot agree to which hospital the person should be sent, the Bill should contain the sort of statutory duty that Amendment No. 29 provides. This, therefore, is another case management issue. It is one in which the system is broke, it needs fixing and it is a simple measure to fix it. I hope, though I am beginning to doubt it, that there may be a chink of light shown in the door when the Minister comesto reply. Perhaps I may say a word about AmendmentNo. 30, although I am sure that the noble Earl, Lord Howe, will speak to that too. The 2004 draft Bill considered by the committee had as Clause 137 a clause that broadly replicated an existing provision—Section 47 of the Mental Health Act 1983. It is a well-known provision that allows the Home Secretary to make a direction to transfer a prisoner or person on remand with a mental disorder to hospital for treatment. It is exercised too rarely in the judgment of people like me who visit prisons from time to time and become aware of the number of people in prison who might well justify such a transfer, but it is a very important power. The person concerned has to meet a number of conditions and the Secretary of State, who is not a medical practitioner generally, has to be of the opinion that it is in the public interest to make such a direction. The aim of this exercise is to ensure that a person who meets the relevant medical conditions should be transferred to hospital and that that transfer should be a duty on the Home Secretary. When I have discussed the matter with various people and stakeholders, the issue of resources has always arisen. I suspect that the provision is probably resource-neutral. The cost of keeping a mentally disordered person in prison is extremely high and is usually disruptive to the prison concerned because it involves moving staff away from their normal duties to deal with the prisoner. Hospitals are obviously more used to dealing with people with mental disorders of the general nature under discussion. I believe that the worst one could say about resources is that moving these people to hospitals, though it might require some shift of resources, is that it would be resource-neutral. I beg to move.