Mental Health Bill [HL]

Baroness Parminter Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 20th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 44 and 66. The Joint Committee on which I serve recommended that community treatment orders be abolished for Part II patients. That recommendation is supported by organisations such as Mind. That is partly due to the awful racial disparity statistics—you are up to 11 times more likely to be under a CTO if you are from a black or Caribbean background—combined with a lack of evidence that CTOs reduce hospital admissions. It took a brave gulp, even as the Joint Committee, to recommend that. The independent review had not gone as far as that, but it was in the report of the Joint Committee.

I, too, like the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, recognise the powerful speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, at Second Reading. I remember that, because of the extremely tight timetable the Joint Committee was given, it did not have time to consider in detail eating disorders or personality disorders, which was regrettable.

I can see from the reasons the noble Baroness outlined that there may be a case for retaining CTOs, perhaps even just for eating disorders. To quote her words from Second Reading, a CTO

“puts a boundary around the eating disorder … that a voluntary agreement could not, in that it makes it clear what will be the result”.—[Official Report, 25/11/24; col. 555.]

The Bill outlines protocols for specific treatments, such as ECT, so it seems possible in principle to have the law apply to specific disorders.

Most reluctantly, I have not made an amendment in Committee in support of the Joint Committee’s recommendation. But the independent review stated that “action is required”. We must not lose sight of that urgency. There are significant problems with CTOs. The argument that is proffered—that they help and are the least restrictive measure for a very small number of patients—is not a good basis for retaining them, bearing in mind the enormous harm they are doing on the other side. I ask the Minister to look for another way, going forward, to help this small group, and not to ask racialised communities to, once again, pay such a high cost for such a small group of patients.

In the Joint Committee’s report, it seemed that the group of patients we were talking about were unrestricted patients under Part III of the Act. Bearing in mind that 79% of CTOs are under Part II, which is for civilian patients, can we look in detail at the evidence to find out which small group of patients we are talking about? There are particular issues, according to our report, if a restraint or restriction is being used on people when the small group of patients seems to be within the forensic context rather than under Part II.

I ask the Minister to put CTOs where they need to be, as a result of these amendments. The independent review said that they should be in the last chance saloon. We must be careful not to lose the urgency that the independent review gave to these issues. Although I support Amendment 66, tabled by my noble friends, it is the very least we can do. The restrictions outlined in Amendment 44 are about ending them after a certain period, because part of the problem is that they go on and on, rolling over for years and years. That coercive effect on certain communities seems to remain, as the path of least resistance.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, I want to say a few things about a couple of the amendments. I thank noble Lords for listening and for recognising the situation. It was powerful to hear that, and I am sure that many in the eating disorder community will be delighted to hear it.

I will not repeat what I said at Second Reading, as there seems no need, but in mentioning that, I want to support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, which picks out the focus on community care and the need for more psychiatrists. I and others have made the case for why CTOs can be valuable for people with eating disorders—and for forensic patients, I understand. The value of the CTO is that the individual is helped to engage in the community with their mental health team. It is a multidisciplinary team, but the anchor is the psychiatrist. The noble Baroness was not sure if this was the right place to put her amendment because it has wider ramifications, but it certainly has value in this debate. CTOs, which I believe should be retained, can work only if there are proper multi-disciplinary teams anchored by a psychiatrist in the community, so that those individuals can be kept out of detained settings and engaged in the community. I thank her for bringing that forward, and I support it.

With regard to Amendment 44, I do not support a maximum duration for a community treatment order, because this is about the individual and what they decide, with their multidisciplinary team. What I like about the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, is that it rightly says that we have to review community treatment orders. People’s mental health situations change, and it is important to have step points at which people know they will be reviewed. I do not support a maximum time limit but the break points, which his probing amendment talks about, are worthy of further debate and discussion. I am grateful to him for bringing that forward.

I say with regret that I do not agree so much with the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for retaining the automatic referral to a tribunal of any CTO that is lifted. Again, that goes against my sense that CTOs are about what is right for the individual. With eating disorders, there will be cases of CTOs being lifted because the person is no longer able to engage with the community team because the eating order has gone beyond the bounds of the CTO and is compromising their health and putting them, bluntly, at risk of death. I do not see why, in those circumstances, there needs to be an automatic referral to a tribunal. Strengthening people’s rights to go to a tribunal where there is a case for that is right and proper, but, because of my view about personalised care—especially for eating disorders, but this has wider ramifications—I do not support the case for automatic referral.

I know that there are people around the Committee who understand the concerns far better than me, particularly about the high preponderance of people in the black community who are on CTOs. I understand and hear that concern. I tried to get to the bottom of the figures, like the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, to find out how many forensic patients were on CTOs. Given that you are four times more likely to be in prison if you are a black person than a white person, I tried to work out what the figures were to get the correlation to say whether it is because there are more people in prison that CTOs are preponderantly in the black community. I could not work that out. Equally, I could not work out how many people with eating disorders were on CTOs. I got the Library to try to help me, and it said that the figures are not cut that way and do not work that way. It seems to me that there is an issue about the data that we, and the Minister, are working with to make informed decisions.

I am not sure about the exact terms and conditions of the review that has been proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, and which in a later group is proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, but I think there is an issue about the data out there. It is not helping us, or anyone else, make CTOs work for those where they can work, are working and should work in the future, and is clearly causing a problem. We need to get to the bottom of that.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken on this group. I will speak to Amendment 66 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Howe. One of the motivations when we were considering amendments from our Benches was not only to respond to concerns raised by stakeholders but to probe the Government on why they did not accept some of the recommendations of the pre-legislative Joint Committee. That is the nature of these amendments. To the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, I say that the amendment is meant as a probing amendment to ask the Government why they have not adopted all the recommendations of the Joint Committee.

One of the things that drives many of us—I feel particularly strongly about this, given my background—is why so many people of an Afro-Caribbean background are being detained or are subject to CTOs. The noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, made a valuable point. One of the reasons I have tabled other amendments along those lines, which will be discussed in later groups, is that, after all these years of saying that too many people from the black community are being detained, if we want to do something about it, we need data, and we need to understand why they are being detained. Without the data, it is left to rumour or speculation, or people make up reasons. Everything needs to be driven by the data if we are to address the fact that a disproportionate number of black people are detained.

We tabled Amendment 66 because the pre-legislative committee recommended that community treatment orders be abolished for Part II patients, those not in the criminal justice system, and wanted a statutory process and timeline to be put in place for the review and potential abolition—I say those words from the Joint Committee’s recommendation very carefully—for Part III patients, those involved with the criminal justice system.

Many noble Lords came to the Second Reading debate wanting to see an end to community treatment orders, and many noble Lords have spoken tonight about this. We were all struck by the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and of the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, who very honestly said that, having listened to patients and families, she knows that there is a small group of people for whom CTOs work, are the least restrictive option and are beneficial, and we should therefore keep them. I was particularly struck by that. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, said that people do not change their mind very often, but the views that we brought to the debate in the first place have been challenged.

The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, made the important point that, while she is reluctant to admit it, she believes that there should be a change in the process around CTOs. That is important. This is why this probing amendment is asking for a comprehensive review of CTOs. We have listed a number of criteria that should be in that review, but I know that many noble Lords have concerns over CTOs.