Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Bill — House of Commons, 2017-11-03
Topic: Health
Rishi Sunak (Conservative, Centre-right): As ever, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point and displays her knowledge of this area. It is absolutely right that we bring help to people wherever they need it and in as many settings as possible. I very much welcome the extraordinary increase in the number of people being trained. Indeed mental health provision needs to be part of an ongoing conversation about the development of young people and the issues that they face. I am confident that we as a society are now heading in the right direction. However, as I have noted, despite that substantial progress, we can in no way believe that the job is done. That is why I will now turn briefly to a few provisions in the Bill and say why they will make a real difference to the transparency in treatment of young people across the country The Bill will establish the requirement that mental health units must publish how and when they use force. That appears to be an eminently sensible change. All of us will be familiar with the detailed reports from Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission. The information that they publish gives us a window into how our public services are being run. Making information available about the strengths and weaknesses of organisations gives us the transparency that is needed to know what improvements need to be made. I see no reason why this should be any different with data on the use of force. This transparency is needed not just by the general public, but by the families of patients against whom force has been used. Of course, sometimes, health professionals will make the difficult judgment to use proportionate force in certain circumstances, but it took seven years for the Lewis family to get the full truth about the event that led to their son’s death. No family should be put in that position ever again The Bill also establishes a duty on the service provider of a mental health unit to record any instance of the use of force on a patient, in addition to recording several demographic characteristics. Added together with the requirement for police officers attending units to wear a body camera, the Bill will help us to be much clearer about how force has been used, against whom and why I wish to highlight the provision which says that, in the event of the death of a patient who was subject to the use of force, the Government will appoint an independent investigator who will produce a report on the incident in a timely fashion. Families who undergo such a tragic loss will have the official help that they need to get to the truth about what happened to their loved one. Those are essential changes that I hope will ensure that, in future, no family will have to fight as hard as the Lewis family did to get the truth that they deserve In conclusion, as many as one in four of us will experience mental ill health at some point in our lives. This is an issue that is simply too profound for us not to ask ourselves as legislators in this place, "What more can we do to prevent injustice occurring? What barriers must the House help to break down?" That is why, once again, I commend the hon. Member for Croydon North for his long-standing efforts on behalf of both the Lewis family and, more broadly, the many people across the country who suffer from mental health problems. The provisions in this Bill will give families and the public the transparency that is needed to ensure that force is used only when necessary. It is part of the journey that we are on as a nation to ensure that people with mental ill health are viewed no differently to those with physical ill health. I commend the Government for backing this vital piece of legislation, and I have been delighted to speak in favour of it today.