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Mental Health Bill [HL]

I agree with the Minister that this has been an extremely good debate and I express my appreciation to all noble Lords who have taken part. It was evident from my earlier remarks that the worry that I have is of both principle and practice. On principle, the simple point that can be made is the comparison between those who are mentally ill and those who have a physical illness. The position for the mentally ill and the risk that they present is, I suggest, very different from the position for people with, let us say, TB. Patients with certain types of TB are a definite risk to the public; despite this, there is no power to treat them compulsorily. That is very different from so-called high-risk mentally ill patients, the majority of whom are still very unlikely to harm anyone. That thought colours my attitude to these proposals as a matter of principle in quite a major way. We then proceed to issues of practice and evidence. A lot was said about the evidence; the noble Lord, Lord Warner, argued that CTOs have been shown to be effective. I would be very interested to see the evidence on which he bases that assertion, because I certainly have not seen it. I guess that it is to be expected that the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Warner, would read the existing evidence somewhat differently from the way I and others would.