Williams PotoSUBSTANCE ADDICTION (COMPULSORY ASSESSMENT AND TREATMENT) BILLIn CommitteeParts 1 to 3 schedules 1 and 2 and clauses 1 and 2POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): It gives me pleasure to take a call on the Substance Addiction (Compulsory Assessment and Treatment) Bill. I want to start with clause 22 Requirements for specialist assessment". The people for whom this piece of legislation is important are those who have got significant addiction issues—so significant that they are at a point of it being life-threatening to them. The requirements under this particular clause—the specialist assessment—are to ensure that all the clinical advice and all the criteria with regard to their treatment are addressed appropriately before an application is then made for their compulsory treatment. The provisions for a court to make that compulsory treatment order sit within clause 32. It is an important part of the discussion that we had in the Health Committee. When you are actually compelling somebody into treatment and you are withdrawing their ability to have free will and free access it is a really important thing that we get that absolutely right in the legislation. We looked initially at what happens under compulsory treatment orders within the mental health field and looked to that as the model with which to ensure that somebody being compulsorily treated for their addictions would be able to retain the rights that they are due under that. It is a significant thing to have somebody take away from you the ability for you to decide how you want to be treated and we have to as legislators ensure that we get that absolutely right. It is not an easy thing that we do. We are not talking about large numbers of people over the course of the year. I think that probably about 200 patients would possibly be in a position to have applications made for them and on their behalf. We talked about the notion of compulsion and how important it is in this particular environment where generally speaking when somebody is seeking treatment for whatever condition they may have the usual way to do that is for that patient to be completely informed and for that process to then allow them to make a decision. But we are talking about a different cohort of people who because their addictions are so severe may not be in a position to actually make those decisions for themselves. During the course of the select committee process there were some changes that we made to particular definitions: for example the question of what a treatment centre is. One of the scenarios that was presented to the committee was around particular residential facilities and whether they could be considered as treatment centres. The decision was made that being such a specialised field we needed to ensure that we could define those appropriately to make sure that those centres were staffed by the people who had the expertise to deal with this significant cohort of people.There were some other things that we really felt we needed to ensure that we get right like the ability for that person to have somebody act on their behalf. This was where the role of the district inspectors came into play. It is similar to what happens in the mental health environment: somebody who is objective and can ensure that the rights of the patient are upheld.We also talked a lot about what happens when somebody goes into this type of treatment and what might happen to their family members and their family's ability to ensure that they know what kind of treatment their loved one is undertaking. So part of the legislation is to ensure that children in particular of patients have the ability to be notified when their loved one is having a compulsory treatment order placed upon them.We spent a bit of time talking about what an approved provider and approved facility would be and just what the criteria would be to ensure that they could meet a particular standard. Some of the submitters said to us that they were concerned that the level of expertise to provide this type of care and this type of treatment is something that we have some way to go to address even with the small numbers of patients that we will be treating over the course of a year. We have actually got some gaps in capacity and some gaps in knowledge in this country and we were concerned at the select committee—and we discussed this quite a bit—about whether we would be in a position to have the treatment available as is required in the legislation from when the legislation actually is passed. There was some concern that that was not actually going to be in place. So that is one of the things I would really like the Minister in the chair Minister Dunne to discuss: whether he is satisfied that the level of expertise is actually going to be available to ensure that the legislation is carried out to its full extent and whether there are plans in place that he is aware of to build that capacity into the health system. I will make some further contributions later but I would ask the Minister whether he has got some confidence that he can supply to the Committee about that particular issue."