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Mental Health Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am very grateful to everyone who has spoken in this short debate, which was on an extremely important issue of principle. The Minister’s full exegesis of the background to the Government’s view and their current position has been extremely helpful to all of us who have listened to the debate. I listened with great care to her very full presentation to try to ascertain whether there had been any movement at all by the Government on this issue; I am afraid that I have come to the conclusion that there has not. The Minister’s responses to the point about the European Convention on Human Rights, the intervention by my noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill and the earlier intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, have left me drawing this conclusion about the ECHR issue; the law is against the Government. The Joint Committee on Human Rights was right. The advice that, I take it, the noble Lord, Lord Patel, has received from the Mental Health Act Commission, which he chairs, seems right. The Government have provided absolutely no case law, no legal opinion and no background that is in any way credible to show that their view is right. As a Member of this House, a lawyer and, I hope, a conscientious legislator, I am simply not prepared to allow a clause to pass when it seems so contrary to a fundamental aspect of the law—namely, the Human Rights Act—that all legislation going through this House must comply with. On the subject very helpfully raised by my noble friend Lord Alderdice, we had the response fed to the noble Baroness by the noble Lord, Lord Soley, that teamwork is the right approach. That, I presume, assumes that teamwork was not going to be involved in any event. The notion that psychiatrists and other clinicians do not work together with social workers, families and all other interested parties in these critical cases is of course absurd. I am sure that the noble Baroness did not mean to imply that. Of course I will give way.