Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2019-04-24
Topic: Health
Dorothea Glenys Thornton (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, it is always a good moment when we get to this point in any legislation. It is also an opportunity for us to look at where we started in July. In July, my Chief Whip spoke to me about a really small, uncontroversial Bill that would amend the Mental Capacity Act. I am not criticising him, because that is what he had been told. The idea was that we would have the Second Reading quickly before the Summer Recess and then move straight into Committee immediately after it and get through the Bill quite quickly. It is a great testament to this House that we recognised quite quickly that it might be a small Bill but it was certainly not uncontroversial. As I said when we moved into Committee, the noble Baronesses, Lady Jolly and Lady Barker, and I were sending each other messages about this Bill when we were all poolside in different parts of Europe because we realised that we needed to understand it much better I do not accept the criticism that we have failed. I think we started off with a flawed Bill and that we have improved it. In a few years’ time I think we will almost certainly return to this subject, because by then we will have discovered things that have not worked out and that need to be reviewed and possibly changed. We need to thank both Ministers for listening, hearing and working to change the Bill. I particularly thank my fellow Peers for working so co-operatively and with such great expertise. It is always a pleasure when we do that and we are always at our most effective when we do so, and I have been very happy that various Members of the House have taken the lead on various issues throughout the passage of the Bill. The Minister named everybody, so I shall not do so again, but they know who they are and it has been a pleasure to work with them We should be pleased that we have successfully tackled what, as far as we were concerned, were certain huge issues, many of which have been mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker. They included care home managers’ powers, conflicts of interest, private hospitals, the definition of deprivation of liberty and the information provided. We should be proud that those issues have been tackled. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy. I have not often been called a juggernaut but on Report he suggested that I was. I think he was expressing the opinion that in my remarks I was representing the views of the whole House and that we were definitely coming for him, as it were. If we are to learn some lessons from this, one is possibly that the Bill team took a little while to gear up to what happens in the House of Lords and how we approach things. We talk to the stakeholders—we have a continuous dialogue with them—and that is the next group that I would like to thank. I thank all the stakeholders who came to endless meetings with us to make sure that we did our job properly, although some of them still have some major concerns I say to the House that what matters is what happens next. First, it seems likely that within the next year or so we will have another mental health Bill, so it is quite possible that some of the issues that we have been concerned about will re-emerge and be discussed during that process. Secondly, we will have the regulations and the code of practice. I would like to be assured that the consultation, which might not have been quite as good as it should have been at the beginning of this whole process, will absolutely inform the code of practice and the regulations that follow the implementation of this legislation I do not wish to threaten the Minister but, after the past eight or nine months, there is a body of commitment and passion over this issue that will certainly be watching and be interested in what happens next and will have something to say about it. Therefore, in a spirit of positiveness, we hope that we will be able to help with the next stages but we will certainly be watching them to make sure that the gains that we have made are reflected in the code of practice and the regulations Finally, I very much thank the Minister, who came in in the middle of the Bill. This is the second Bill that she has had to pick up and run with in your Lordships’ House. She has done it with great dignity and intelligence, and it has been a pleasure to work with her.