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Mental Health Bill [HL]

My Lords, I rise with some trepidation because I am a great admirer of the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, and my noble friend Lady Murphy. But I take a different view. It is not that I think this is perfect legislation, but it links in with the two previous Acts and enhances them. I also take the view that other clinicians, not necessarily medical clinicians, may be better placed to take some of the decisions about admitting people because they work with the individuals. I say that having worked, as the vice-chair of the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, in a quasi situation with sex offenders, where medics were simply not interested in cognitive programmes that proved that the offenders could change their behaviour, with a very low rate of repeat offences. We will be going backwards if we take the simplistic view that a broader group of people cannot be trained well and helped to develop their skills to work in this field. I recognise that this issue is extraordinarily complex and that medication is an important part of it. Medics issue prescriptions, but there are plenty of clinicians who are not doctors but who can administer medications on behalf of doctors. There are other ways of moving forward. I hope that we will do so, but I say that with some humility in the face of the two noble Lords who have just spoken.