Mental Health Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Neuberger and Baroness Fox of Buckley

Committee stage
Monday 24th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neuberger (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly in support of Amendments 163 and 164, to which I have added my name, and particularly about the length of time, the five years.

We first started talking about the reforms to the mental health legislation eight years ago, when we set up the review of the legislation under Sir Simon Wessely, and I was the vice-chair. It reported in 2018—seven years ago—and it was not even a very radical rethink of our mental health legislation. Yes, it will make a lot of difference to a lot of people—service users are very keen for this to come about, and they certainly do not want to wait longer than five years to see all the measures come into force—but this is relatively gentle stuff. At some stage we will need a much more radical rethink of our mental health legislation. Five years is quite a long time, so I rather hope the Minister can give us some comfort by saying that most of it will be done in two years, or perhaps three years at the outside.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, first, I support Amendment 130 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Scriven. I have been concerned, as we have discussed this Bill, that costs are likely to spiral. I am not objecting to that, but it seems to be the elephant in the room. Unless we know, the Bill will become a white elephant because people will just say that we cannot afford to do it. It is far better to have transparency, as has been argued.

Secondly, I oppose Amendment 153. For a number of reasons, I do not think we should prohibit for-profit entities being involved in this endeavour. The suggestion is that if we remove the profit motive, all will be well. A word of caution: not-for-profit organisations are not necessarily the most efficient, virtuous organisations, as we might imagine. In the charitable sector there are some worrying trends of money being spent, rather self-indulgently, on staffing and on all manner of extraneous and sometimes politicised endeavours.

We have seen the emergence of EDI—equality, diversity and inclusion—policies, which the Health Minister, Wes Streeting, has worried about happening in the state sector, and we have seen them become absolutely rampant in the charitable and not-for-profit sector. I want us to concentrate on the people the Bill is designed to help and therefore not to have our own political idea that only the state can deliver well—I just do not believe that is true.

For example, I have done work in prisons over a period of time—that also relates to the Bill—and have worked in both private and state-run prisons. Some private prisons are awful and some state-run prisons are worse—and, by the way, I have worked in some brilliant state-run prisons and some brilliant privately run prisons. We should judge on the basis of the quality of the care or the service that they provide, not some prior presumption that because they make profit they might be useless, somehow evil or not attending to their core mission.