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Mental Health Bill [HL]

I, too, strongly welcome these amendments, which seek to reinstate one of the best features of the 2004 draft Bill. The need for accessible, independent advocacy has been accepted in relation to mental capacity and it is crucial that it should be accepted in the field of mental health care. I have heard many moving stories, both from patients and still more often from their closest relatives, who may be the nearest relatives in the terms that we have talked about today or may be other close relatives—people who, when confronted by the bewilderment of mental illness, find themselves unable to cope or to understand. All of us who have had to care for people facing such a crisis, or who have faced such a crisis ourselves, know how bewildering and disorientating it is. We also know how haphazard the care and advice provided in such circumstances is. Doctors and others who are responsible for the patient who is liable to be detained or to receive intrusive treatment are often unable to provide impartial advice in any way that will be heard by the patient. Time and again, the result is simply more confusion. As we have heard, clergy are among those who are often called in at such times—hospital chaplains, police chaplains or parish clergy. We do our best and we can provide pastoral care, but that is no substitute for the independent advocacy that is sought by this amendment. It will provide support for vulnerable people to cope not only with their illness, but with a fear of authority, which may affect them deeply and lastingly into the future. I very much hope that we shall be able to add these clauses to the Bill.