Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Bill

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Steve Reed

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 3rd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Reed]

I completely agree, and I am delighted that the National Autism Society fully supports the Bill and its provisions.

I was talking about the number of patients who have died following the use of restraint, and the many more who have been seriously injured. Government guidelines say that face-down restraint is so dangerous it should not be used at all, but it was used over 9,000 times in the last year alone, including 2,500 times against children as young as seven. People who have been restrained talk about the experience with horror. They say that it is frightening, painful and humiliating, and they feel stripped of their dignity. In the words of one woman:

“It made me feel like a criminal, like I had done something wrong, not that I was ill and needed to get better.”

Statistics from the campaign group Agenda show that women are more likely to be restrained face down on the floor than men. Up to half of all women in mental health hospitals have been physically or sexually abused by men. Subjecting these women to face-down restraint by groups of men adds to the trauma that in many cases led to their mental illness in the first place.

It is difficult to understand clearly from the existing data what exactly is going on. There is no standardised way of recording why, when or how restraint is used. However, from their own data, there appear to be wide discrepancies between mental health providers. Some restrain as few as 5% of patients, while others restrain over 50%. There is no good reason for that variation.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is now time for each provider to publish, correctly and robustly, the data available, and should not the Minister make a commitment to the publication of the data?

[Mr Reed]

I agree, and I very much hope that the Minister will make such a commitment today.

There are fears about unconscious bias in the mental health services. The Angiolini review, a very important review published earlier this week, notes how a disproportionate number of people from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities have died after the use of force in custody more generally. Black people are four times more likely to be sectioned than white people. If we look at the faces of the people who have died after severe restraint in a mental health hospital, we see many more young black faces than in the population as a whole. We need to understand the extent to which assumptions based on stereotypes are causing that, but to do so we need standardised data recording.

What the Bill proposes is simple, but it will make a big difference. It will standardise the way in which the data on every instance of the use of force are recorded, so that we can better understand where force is being used unnecessarily, and the extent of any bias and disproportionality in the system. It will improve arrangements between the police and mental health services, and require the police to wear body cameras when carrying out restraint, unless there are good operational reasons not to do so.