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Mental Health Bill [Lords]

I will respond briefly to the points that have been made. First, on the issue raised by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and by my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), we have taken on board the points made during pre-legislative scrutiny about the estimates for advocacy. We are still working on the costings, but when the Bill hopefully completes its passage through the Commons, we will be able to produce an updated regulatory impact assessment before the Lords consider the Commons amendments. I hope that that will improve the position outlined by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham. Turning to the point that the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Angela Browning) made about privacy, proposed new section 130B already includes provisions for an advocate to meet the patient in private, and I assure the hon. Lady that we will expand on that in the code of practice. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) for his comments, as I know that he is concerned about the issue, particularly the question of advocacy and the nearest relative. I can assure him that proper information about rights will be made available. We always keep those issues under consideration. As for the position of the nearest relative, anyone living with the patient for five years will be placed on the list, as he knows, and anyone living with, or caring for, a patient will be moved to the top of the list. We have therefore tried to make sure that carers are properly defined and treated in the same way that they are treated under other legislation. The hon. Member for Romsey (Sandra Gidley) rightly raised the issue of black and minority ethnic patients. As I have set out, we have taken a series of actions under ““Delivering race equality in mental health care”” but, as I tried to stress at the outset, we are considering specialist advocacy for people from BME communities. I reiterate that it is important to confine advocacy to the groups that have been set out. I very much welcome the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones) about the fact that we need to make sure that, when we look at the issue of the nearest relative, we involve the relevant people to ensure that the code of practice is right. I thank her for her understanding of the issues that we have tried to tackle. As I have said, I wanted to see whether there was anything further that we can do, but I am convinced that with the exception of the question of looking at the code of practice and so on—I will keep in touch with her on that—we have found the right way forward. I will write to the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams) about the issue of the Welsh language. As I have said before, essentially, this is a question about devolving the issue to the Welsh Assembly. As he said, it is about the Welsh language, too, but I will make sure that Ministers in Wales are aware of his comments. Finally, I welcome the support given during the debate to our proposals on advocacy. I regret that I still cannot agree to the new clause tabled by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham because I do not think it is practical and we already have the power that we need to make the changes. Of course I will look at the evidence from MHAC, but we would have to be clear that the proposal was properly evidence based. For that reason I ask the House not to support the new clause if the hon. Gentleman decides to press it to a vote later. Question put and agreed to. Clause read a Second time, and added to the Bill.