Mental Health Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Scriven and Baroness Butler-Sloss

Tuesday 14th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak my Amendments 8, 11, 15, 18, 19 and 20 in this group. They are to do what my noble friend Lady Barker said: to try to beef up the care (education) and treatment reviews, because something is amiss. As my noble friend said, too many of them are sitting on stuffy and dusty shelves, and not enough people get access to them to be able to advocate for and follow through on them.

Amendments 8 and 15 are important regarding the people who are legally entitled to receive a copy of the care (education) and treatment review. I support the amendment from the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, to add the parent and guardian, which was an omission. Currently, the Bill provides for a copy to be sent only to the responsible commissioner, the patient’s responsible clinician, the ICB and the local authority. To ensure that the patient and their family, carer and advocates are fully aware and informed of the decisions being made around their care, can hold services to account and can follow up on the care and treatment plan recommendations, it is essential that they too receive a copy of the report.

These amendments would ensure that the patient, the patient’s nominated person and the patient’s independent mental health advocate receive a copy of the care and treatment report. I note that the Minister has tabled an amendment setting out that a copy of the report “may” be given to other persons, but this does not place a strong enough duty to involve the patient and significant others to ensure that adequate oversight of the care and treatment review reports is available to them.

Amendments 11 and 18 reduce the maximum time between the reviews from 12 months to six months for adults and children. This is in line with the recommendation of the Joint Committee on the Draft Mental Health Bill. According to NHSE data, 24% of autistic people and people with learning disabilities detained in mental health hospitals have been waiting for more than one year for a CETR or have no CETR at all, and 31% have had the date of their next scheduled CETR pass or have no scheduled CETR at all.

We know that autistic people and people with learning disabilities face lengthy stays. There must be a drive to discharge these people. The idea that we would have a CETR only every 12 months to help prevent a lengthy stay shows how worryingly normalised long lengths of stays have become for these individuals. In many cases, a maximum interval of 12 months may be too long and mean that autistic people and people with learning disabilities face delays to their discharge planning. The current frequency of CETRs in the Bill is not in line with NHS England’s policy, which states that, for adults, CETRs should be held at a maximum frequency of six months.

Amendments 19 and 20 seek to ensure that the recommendations of CETRs are followed through. This is essential to ensuring that the needs of individuals are being met and that steps are being taken to prepare for their discharge. Often, the recommendations arising from CETRs are constructive, and those attending may leave with the impression that the right steps are being taken. However, the frequent failure to carry out the recommendations arising from these reports undermines faith in the process and can lead to unnecessary delays in an individual’s needs being met and in their discharge.

CETRs, which are essential to providing safeguards for autistic people and people with learning disabilities under the Bill, are important. Their being undermined cannot be allowed. The current language in the Bill for the responsible clinicians, commissioners, integrated care boards and local authorities says that they must “have regard” to the recommendations. I believe that this is too weak. Legally, the definition of “regard” is that a public body must consider something and, once it has been considered, has discretion to carry out or ignore it. A duty in law is an obligation and must be followed, and the reason why it has been followed must be given. These amendments would substitute “regard”—the weaker definition—for “a duty” to carry out these actions unless a compelling reason is provided for why this is not possible. This follows a similar recommendation from the Joint Committee on the Mental Health Bill, which stated that ICBs and local authorities should be required to “follow” recommendations in reports—that is, have a duty.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I should like to speak to Amendment 9, following on from the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, on Amendment 8.

We are dealing with the responsible commissioner making arrangements for the care (education) and treatment review meetings and the report. I do not know whether I am a lone voice speaking in this House but I am a mother and a grandmother, and there is not a single word in any part of this Bill about parents or guardians—not a word. I could find references to parental responsibility only in new Schedule A1 and Schedule 2, although I may be wrong.

Can I just suggest something to noble Lords? Where you have a child—here, I am dealing specifically with a child—with autism or physical or mental disabilities, it is quite probable, if not most likely, that that person will be living with their family and their parents. I must say, my experience as a family judge led me to believe that only about 5% to 10% of parents who came through the courts were not suitable to look after their children full time. But according to Clause 4—which inserts new Section 125A—the one group of people who will not be told what the future care (education) and treatment review given to their child will be includes the people with whom that child has been living for all their life. I cannot understand why this Bill seems to think that parents, guardians and other people with parental responsibility do not matter. That is why I have raised this issue. I feel intensely strongly about it, as a mother and a grandmother.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Scriven and Baroness Butler-Sloss

Committee stage
Wednesday 18th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

Section 56 says that it is utterly wrong to have companies that make money by exploiting people down the chain—consequently, it is wrong. But, for reasons I do not know but can guess, the last Government, who put in place this very good bit of legislation, presumably did not want to offend businesses. I understand that there are problems in making it mandatory but, if somebody is making money that they are going to put into a football club by exploiting other people down the chain, that is something we should not want our clubs to be involved in.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I was unable to join your Lordships at Second Reading and have decided to add my name, and speak, only to amendments on areas where I have relevant knowledge. I speak as somebody who has for a number of years been a co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Democracy and Human Rights in the Gulf, and also led the first ever debate on sportswashing in your Lordships’ House in March of this year. Therefore, I will speak in favour of the amendments I have added my name to—Amendment 185 and in particular Amendment 193 from my noble friend Lord McNally, who cannot be here in his place today. I also strongly support Amendment 200 on state entities.

It is interesting listening to the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, and other noble Lords talk about human rights and the Human Rights Act. Let us be clear. What the regulator will be doing here is having a statutory responsibility for ensuring that a takeover of a club takes into consideration human rights issues. Under the Human Rights Act an individual can bring a case based on their feeling that their human rights have been undermined. If you are in Saudi Arabia, Qatar or the UAE, you cannot bring that case as an individual whose human rights have been undermined, particularly when it comes to a state entity potentially taking over a football club. That is what these amendments are about. Rather than just financial issues, when it comes to a takeover of a club, as a statutory point of principle human rights should be looked at by the regulator independently to decide whether a potential director is a fit and proper person to be able to take over and manage an English football club. That is what this debate is about.

It is interesting that certain issues in the Bill are specific, such as money laundering, so the Government have accepted that the regulator can look at specific issues. These amendments ask that another area specified in the Bill should be human rights abuses carried out not just in the UK but elsewhere in the world, particularly when it is a state entity or an individual linked to a state entity. The reason why this is important is that the concept of sportswashing, where sports clubs are bought particularly to try to influence soft power, is really taking hold. The previous Government understood that when it came to taking over media in this country. There was an issue to do with how state-entity organisations, including their potential human rights abuses, actually stopped takeover of the media.

I am sure that the Minister, when it comes to arguing the Government’s case if they are not minded to do this, will look at the Global Human Rights Sanctions Regulations 2020 as the cloak of respectability, where the powers already exist for this to be looked at. Well, let us be clear. These were introduced with the aim of holding individuals and entities accountable for human rights abuses. However, these regulations are not proving efficient in stopping foreign Government entities from owning Premier League clubs, or any league club. The Newcastle deal, where the Saudi Public Investment Fund took over Newcastle, happened 15 months after these regulations came into force.

These regulations target individuals and specific entities, not entire Governments or sovereign wealth funds. This is a critical loophole which we can see in the case of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which now owns Newcastle United and operates a state-controlled entity that presents itself as independent of government. As a result, it evades direct scrutiny under the sanctions framework. There is also a lack of transparency with these regulations, because decisions about who we sanction are not clear and are at the whim of an individual Minister. That is why I believe there should be the provisions in the Bill laid down in Amendment 200 and the other amendments which I put my name to.

The Global Human Rights Sanctions Regulations lack the reach and enforcement power to prevent foreign state entities linked to human rights abuses owning English Premier League clubs. That is why these amendments are required. Otherwise, I believe that our national game, football, will potentially remain a platform for authoritarian regimes or individuals who have committed human rights abuses and will be used as a sportswashing exercise that will tarnish their own reputations and image and not defend our national game.