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Mental Health Bill [Lords]

I, too, congratulate the Minister. In some respects, this has been a very difficult Bill. Some of the arguments have been separated only by a thin line, which was exemplified by those that we heard today on new clause 12. It has certainly been a difficult Bill for the Minister to steer through the House, but she has done it with courage and professionalism, and has presented her arguments with great clarity. I want to make it clear that the Committee was not full of people who were always going to agree with the Government. Some of the awkward squad were there. I include myself in that: I was prepared to challenge the Government, although on this occasion I have agreed wholeheartedly with the Government line. I am very pleased to be able to say that. I believe that the addition of the advocacy measure to the final Bill is a great step forward. I was a little surprised that it was not included initially, but I am very pleased that it is there now. I must tell all those who have deluged me, and other Committee members, with briefings that there has just been too much of it. It has jammed my e-mail inbox, and filled my sacks of mail. I have a confession to make: I have not read it all. I think that there is a message there. Why should we receive a briefing from the Mental Health Alliance and, at the same time, briefings from all its members? I am grateful for the briefings, but I ask those who sent them please to send us a few less in future. During the Bill’s passage, I have detected a tension between psychiatrists and psychologists. The Government are trying to build a modern mental health service in which all professionals work in harmony and to the same end—to help the patients who benefit from the service. I hope that the professionals will listen to that message. At the beginning of the Committee stage I felt like a member of the Stasi, being accused of wanting to lock people up for having strange religious practices, political views or sexual deviancies of one kind or another. In fact, I felt—and now believe wholeheartedly—that the Minister was trying to strike a balance between liberty and human rights on the one hand, and on the other hand the need to recognise that there are people out there who can benefit from modernised mental health services. People with serious personality disorders, for instance, can benefit from the application of appropriate treatment, with a consequent saving of lives that might otherwise be lost as a result of both homicides and suicides.