Mental Health Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Bradley and Baroness Berridge

Tuesday 14th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bradley (Lab)]

I support and have added my name to Amendment 13, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, around communication issues. As she rightly pointed out, this could have been linked to Amendment 2, which has already been debated at some length. I will not repeat the same arguments, but they apply to this amendment, which is why I support it.

I also very strongly support the amendment on housing tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker. I am chair of NHS England’s health and justice advisory board and have worked on the development of RECONNECT, the service to support people coming out of prison back into the community, which is very much a health-based initiative. Unless their housing needs are met at that point, their treatment, their support and their care plan can fall apart very quickly. Consequently, they are very quickly back in the criminal justice system. The same comparison can be made with this amendment. I strongly support housing being at the core of all issues relating to health and social care.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, on Amendment 9. I know that there are other amendments in relation to the inclusion of parents and guardians. I raise just two small points in relation to this.

When one looks at where this amendment is inserted in the list, the last of the persons currently listed who would receive the report is

“the local authority in whose area the patient is ordinarily resident”.

That potentially will not always be the local authority where there is a care order. Therefore, in those circumstances, the local authority is caught with an

“other person who has parental responsibility”.

However, that is not how this is drafted in other parts of the Bill, where an

“other person who has parental responsibilities”

means guardians et cetera. For consistency of drafting, we need to look at that.

I know that the Minister has been very generous in the time that we have had with her and her officials, but we need a consistent phraseology within the Bill because with this amendment, if there was a special guardian the report would also go to the person with what is informally known as residual parental responsibility. Normally they are informed only, for instance, of the change of name of the child or if the child is going to leave the jurisdiction. We need to look at everybody with parental responsibility and have some consistent phraseology within the Bill when we are meaning the local authority when there is a care order and parental responsibility, to include all the different circumstances in which a child may have their status changed from the ordinary situation of living at home with parents when a court order is in place.