---

Mental Health Bill [Lords]

The Minister is trying to repeat our previous, truncated debated. Her logic and analysis imply that, in the incoming Prime Minister’s constituency, under the Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003, which contains impaired decision-making provisions, people are much more susceptible to suicide. There is no empirical evidence for that. We are worried because there is a significant risk that the Bill will undo much of the good work in improving mental health services and the relationships between service users and providers. There is a genuine risk of investing in a new regime of compulsion, which will have a counter-productive effect, alienating rather than engaging with people with mental health problems and possibly increasing rather than reducing patient and public safety. Patients could well slip under the clinical radar, and we do not want that to happen. We want a Bill with which we can work, with which clinicians can work and with which patients can work and engage. We want a Bill that reassures the public that their safety is being protected, and balanced with the liberty and medical care of others. We need a Bill that is fit for the 21st century. We are almost there, but the measure, which now returns to the Lords, still contains too much that is objectionable and will deter people from presenting. We cannot, therefore, support it as it stands. I urge my colleagues to vote against it, but in doing that, I hope that the Government will take our concerns on board, engage constrictively with the Lords and go that bit further so that we can have a Mental Health Act 2007 of which we can all be proud. I look forward to considering the measure again when the Government have taken our concerns on board and it returns from the Lords.