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Mental Health Bill [Lords]

I accept that and certainly we will listen to the concerns as the Bill goes through Committee. I appreciate that there is a divergence of views on that issue. In 2004, the Joint Scrutiny Committee reached a conclusion that one would have thought would be largely uncontroversial. It said:"““The primary purpose of mental health legislation must be to improve mental health services and safeguards for patients and to reduce the stigma of mental disorder.””" That does not appear to be the Government’s view. The Government define the purpose of the Bill very narrowly. They say that it is"““about the legal processes for bringing people under compulsion.””" Clearly, that is an incredibly important issue, but the divide in perceptions of purposes of legislation is remarkable. I want to say something about protection of the public. The Government make much of that, and in many respects rightly so. It is of course entirely legitimate and right to consider public safety and to ensure that people are not unnecessarily put at risk, but we need to ensure that legislation is guided by evidence, and it is incumbent on us all not to stir up fear where evidence might provide reassurance. The Government’s approach appears to be based on an assumption that mental ill health, particularly in severe forms such as schizophrenia, is necessarily linked to violence and that the problem is getting worse, caused by care in the community and the inadequacies of the Mental Health Act 1983. What is the evidence? According to the evidence that I have seen, 5 per cent. of homicides are committed by people who have at some stage had contact with mental health services. That position has remained largely unchanged for the past 50 years. In other words, the emergence of care in the community appears to have had very little impact on those statistics—on those trends. Far more murders are committed by people under the influence of drink or drugs, and there is certainly no suggestion that we should be locking them up on a preventive basis. If we look at the number of murders committed by people who are currently suffering from a mental health problem, we again find little change. There have been 30 to 40 a year since 1997, yet the overall murder rate has increased by some 30 per cent. in that time, so murders committed by people with mental health problems form a reducing percentage of the total number of murders. Only one person in 20,000 with schizophrenia commits murder. As I understand it from talking to experts, there is also the problem that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to predict which person could be violent. I understand that attempts to predict are wrong in 97 cases out of 100. We would have to lock up 2,000 to 2,500 people to prevent a single homicide. On the point made by the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside, of course we are not suggesting that we are going to lock up that number of people, but if we do not, we do not achieve the objective of preventing people from being killed.