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Mental Health Bill [Lords]

I shall try to be brief, because I know that others wish to speak—although the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore), Chairman of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, who tabled amendment No. 69, does not appear to be present, so perhaps we have a little more time than we thought. Let me begin by putting on record something rather distasteful. Apparently, the Sunday Mirror—not a paper that I read regularly—published an article entitled ““Tories to block new paedo law””, which claimed"““The MPs want to water down a new Mental Health Bill allowing dangerous patients to be detained and forced to have treatment. At the moment dangerous patients and perverts can walk the streets simply because they have an ‘untreatable’ condition. . . But Tory MPs will claim the Bill breaches human rights in the Commons tomorrow. They want to exempt ‘sexual deviants’, which could lead to paedophiles claiming they are just ‘deviants’ and should not be locked up.””" What an ill-informed, shoddy bit of journalism and scaremongering from someone who is supposed to be the political editor of the Sunday Mirror, not that I think that that amounts to much of a job. If that article is not scaremongering—misinformed scaremongering—I do not know what is.