Mental Health Bill [HL]

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 20th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Buscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I want to add to what the noble Baroness just said. Amendment 139 goes to the heart of the Bill in terms of changing the culture and the way that we treat people. The Bill will become a piece of law that is practical only if we can honestly put hand on heart and say that we will substantially increase community-based services. Without that, it will not deliver that which we all believe will be the minimum to improve people’s lives.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, on the amendment outlining the definition of “serious harm”, two situations were raised with us on the Joint Committee. One was that the change in the criteria is the main tool that will help with racial inequalities; I would be grateful if the Minister could outline how she envisages that will work in practice. The second point was about the period during which such serious harm has to be exhibited. We heard numerous times about people with psychosis, many of whom—I think it was over 70%—do not realise that they are getting ill when they are presenting. How poorly do they have to get? Sometimes the intervention might need to be sooner than in the definition we understood of “serious harm”, which was slightly different from that which the independent review had, which I think was of “significant harm”. If the Minister could address those two points, that would be very helpful.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Merron) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their contributions to this important debate in which a number of key issues have been raised.

Amendment 23, tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, relates to new Section 125D, regarding registers of people with a learning disability and autistic people who are at risk of detention. The amendment would remove new Section 125D(5), which defines

“specified risk factors for detention”.

I heard the noble Earl, Lord Howe, refer to this as an Aunt Sally amendment—I politely have “a probing amendment” here but I hope that we are in the same area—that is intended to clarify the definition of

“specified risk factors for detention under Part 2 of this Act”.