Mental Health Bill [HL]

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd January 2025 Lords Chamber

Debate on Amendment 57 resumed.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 60A. At this time of night, I do not intend to make a very long or detailed speech; I simply wish to make two points. Previous speakers, such as the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, talked about factors that should be included in care and treatment plans and often are not, for a variety of reasons. But they are crucially and directly important to the health and well-being of an individual.

I wish to talk about the inclusion of housing, for two reasons. First, housing is a source of anguish and mental strain, full stop. It does not matter whether people have mental health problems, but if they have and they find themselves in an acute hospital, either detained or as a voluntary patient, I am sure that, when they come back, there will be a very high incidence of them losing their tenancy and then being unable to find suitable accommodation, particularly if they are young.

Members of your Lordships’ House have already spoken about the fact that there are very few treatment centres dotted around the country for young people with eating disorders—here in the Bill we are talking about England. That therefore means that young people are having to go very long distances for treatment, which can have a significant disruptive effect on their living circumstances.

The other reason I thought it was worthwhile to table this amendment and have the debate was that the other day, we had a wider debate about care and treatment plans. The one question many of us were trying to ascertain the answer to was: who is responsible for them? Who is responsible for drawing them up and implementing them? Crucially, who is responsible if they are not implemented and there is a consequence to that for an individual? If we cannot focus our minds on that now, given what has been going on in the country, we never will. The only thing I could take away from our discussion the other day was that nobody is responsible for it at all; nobody is going to carry the can.

When we are talking about people who have been in acute care, very little attention is paid to their housing needs, because that is not the duty of that service provider, whose focus is on acute care. We know that local authorities are already required to provide aftercare and advice to individuals, but advice in the face of a bailiff turfing you out of your house is frankly of limited use. So, I would like the Minister to please consider this amendment and give assurances that, when we ever get to the bottom of who is responsible for these care and treatment plans, this is on the list of things for which they can be held accountable.