Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2018-12-11
Topic: Health
James O’Shaughnessy (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to noble Lords for their acceptance of the amendment. It was tabled as a result of noble Lords’ input and their best endeavours to resolve the situation. It goes part of the way there, as we have discussed, and the Government are committed to solving it as the Bill moves to its Commons stages. There were specific questions on the amendment that I want to deal with. There were subsequent issues but I will deal with the Mental Health Act issues now. I shall leave them until my closing speech because they anticipate what I will say when we come to the final part of the Bill’s passage On the amendment, the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, asked about the code of practice and ensuring that protection is set out in whistleblowing legislation. We will make sure that we do that. As she will know, and as I have discussed before in the House, the Government are committed to doing more on that in the follow-up to the Gosport scandal. That is important. She also made excellent suggestions about the role of the CQC, its inspection framework and making sure that those provisions are well understood, and about helping to train responsible bodies to look for patterns. That is excellent advice, which we shall make sure is reflected in both the code of conduct and the regulatory regime. I think those were the only questions on the amendment Perhaps I may mention the Mental Health Act review before I finish on the amendment and move on. Clearly, it is an important piece of work. There are 152 recommendations and it is right that we take time to consider the right way to respond to them. The Government have already taken on board two of those recommendations, but there are many more to consider. One of the questions in front of us, which we have talked about to some degree during the stages of the Bill—and which will clearly come to the fore in the Commons stages—is: what is the right vehicle to deal with the interface between the suggestions that Simon Wessely has made There is a difference of opinion in this House about how that should be done. The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, and others have a contrary view, but we need to solve the problem in front of us—which is that the deprivation of liberty safeguard system is not working—and then, when we have decided what the right thing to do is, to improve the Mental Health Act and its interface with the Mental Capacity Act at that point. It would be precipitous to try to do that now, before we have had an opportunity to consider it properly. In saying that, I do not mean it is not important—quite the opposite. It is so important to get it right that rushing through it could store up problems of a kind that we do not want The noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, asked about advocates, their training for the new dividing lines and various other questions. We will have to work through these matters as we consider the right way forward in the Bill. I disagree with the suggestion of the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, that we should reconsider whether the Bill goes ahead because it is not intended to, and does not, reflect these issues. The Bill needs to go ahead. We know that it will not solve all the problems before us and we will probably need to act again. However, noble Lords will know that it is not always straightforward to get legislative time—let alone at the moment—and we need to take advantage of the opportunity that we have to do something good now and seek to do further good when the opportunity presents itself. I will reserve my other reflections until my closing speech, when I will attempt to deal with them. Otherwise, I thank noble Lords for their contributions to and support for this amendment. I beg to move.