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Mental Health Bill [HL]

The noble Lord, Lord Patel, makes a powerful case. I am afraid that my answer is essentially the one that I gave to the last amendment. He has clearly raised important issues of concern. We are consulting on the right regulatory body to bring forward the three commissions that I have already put together. Clearly, issues of powers and duties of monitoring in relation to the operation of the Mental Health Act need to be considered in taking that body forward. We will announce how and when we will make that further consideration in due course, and I will ensure that the noble Lord’s comments are taken into account. I take to heart his points about the need for information on various ethnic groups, the impact that such monitoring has on services more generally and the way in which those services are organised. Amendment No. 45 would require notification of all admissions of voluntary patients. We see a problem with that in terms of the numbers—tens of thousands of patients with mental disorder were admitted voluntarily. We are yet to be persuaded that this would improve monitoring under the Mental Health Act, but I assure the noble Lord that we definitely see a need for improvements to the functions involved in monitoring mental health legislation, which we intend to realise through a new regulator working across the whole health and adult social care sector.