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Mental Health Bill [Lords]

My hon. Friend raises an important point about people being deterred from seeking treatment, but one reason why they are deterred is that they feel that they will have to spend a long time in a hospital setting. In actual fact, supervised community treatment is about providing the least restrictive setting that we can, if it is appropriate for a patient. It is about sending a clear message that when we talk about compulsory treatment, it does not always mean having to keep people in a hospital setting; we will allow them to return to their families, if that is appropriate. That is a different message, and it is less stigmatising and less discriminatory than saying that anything to do with compulsion has to involve a hospital setting. I think that the measures will not have the effect that my hon. Friend is talking about. I believe, too, that there is a series of reasons why a disproportionate number of people from BME communities receive compulsory treatment. There are delays in people coming forward, because they do not access community services. Some of them take a different route into compulsion—for example, through greater contact with the criminal justice system. Very often, their relatives contact the police, but not health professionals. There is therefore a series of complicated reasons for that disproportionate number, which is why we have introduced the ““Delivering race equality”” programme, and why—I am afraid to use the phrase, but it is what they are called—we have focused implementation sites around the country, including several in London, which are looking particularly at the reasons why people do not come forward for treatment, and why a greater proportion of BME patients receive compulsory treatment. It is not as easy as saying that there are greater numbers because people are frightened to come forward—the position is much more complex. May I tell my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn), too, that it is important to remember the fundamental principles? As a result of discussions in the other place, we have included in the Bill the points that should be addressed when we draw up the principles in the code of practice. One of those principles is the avoidance of unlawful discrimination, and we have made it clear in the Bill and the code of the practice that racial discrimination must be tackled as part of the way in which clinicians and the measure itself operate.