Mental Health Bill [HL]

We have had an interesting and useful discussion and I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Howe, for proposing that we debate the Question on clause stand part in this way. It is an opportunity for all of us to reflect on some of the important issues raised. As my noble friend Lord Warner suggested, some of them fall to be discussed within the overall context of the Government’s wish to take community treatment forward. I will attempt to arrange before the Report stage an opportunity for Members of the Committee to meet our advisers to discuss CTOs and the way we expect them to operate. I am sure that we would all find that useful. As the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, suggested, it is one of the major pillars of the legislation and no wonder we are having an extensive debate today. As my noble friend Lord Warner said, far from this being the negative measure that it has been painted, it brings mental health law in line with what has been achieved in modernising mental health services. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, that farfrom seeing this as a conflict with the welcome developments in community services, we see it as marching hand in hand with them. The Government see it as one of the important elements in dealing with the revolving-door cycle—that of admission to hospital and treatment leading to improvement, discharge, relapse and readmission. There is no question but that, in terms of that extremely vulnerable group of people, anything we can do to provide the kind of support that will stop that happening must be seriously considered. This is a difficult and complex area, but we are attempting to put in place a framework that enables professionals to treat patients effectively in the community while protecting their rights. There is no reason why the existence of community treatment orders should frighten people and make it less likely that they would seek treatment. Patients can go on supervised community treatment only after a period of detention in hospital. Therefore, such treatment is not an issue at the outset of illness. Nor do we see it as damaging the relationship between professionals, patients and the clinical team. We believe that supervised treatment will help to foster trust; it will help compliance with treatment in the community and make it easier for professionals to sustain a therapeutic relationship with someone if they remain well rather than if they keep relapsing. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, asked about perverse incentives. I recognise that noble Lords have expressed a fear that the Government’s aim is to bring into place a system of compulsion at the whim of clinicians and that many more people will end up on supervised community treatment. That is not what we seek to do. It is clear that all of us have trawled in the same pot of evidence. We can sometimes find what we want to find, but there is no question but that there are examples of favourable perceptions of community treatment orders among clinicians and patients. The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, has referred to the work that has been commissioned by my department. I did not recognise what she said about the research being sat on. My understanding is that it is currently being peer-reviewed. I do not yet have a date when that is likely to be completed, but I will let the noble Baroness know when that date is made known to me. As far as the numbers are concerned, the estimate that we have given is 3,000 to 4,000 over the next four or so years. These are estimates; an entirely new regime is being proposed. Decisions to place a patient on a supervised community treatment will be made at the discretion of the clinician responding to individual patients and their needs. Clearly, a large number of factors will influence the uptake of supervised community treatment, but we do not recognise the high figures that have been quoted by other organisations. It will be critical to monitor the use of supervised community treatment to assess its uptake in the first year of use, which will of course inform further guidance advice that may be given to the health service. We will certainly want to do that. Some noble Lords have expressed concern that a community treatment order can be made too easily and that the criteria for supervised community treatment are too broad. That is not what we intend. We have set a high eligibility threshold. Patients must have been so ill that they have been detained in hospital for treatment under Section 3. That is not a hurdle lightly cleared; it goes further than what happens in other countries that have gone down the route of community treatment order-type approaches. Strict criteria must be met before a patient can be placed on a community treatment order. Among other factors, a patient must remain liable to recall to hospital and be subject to compulsory powers under the Act, so the decision-maker must be satisfied that the compulsion is necessary for the patient to receive the treatment that he needs. They must be satisfied that there are factors such as the patient’s previous history of non-engagement and non-compliance that make it unsafe to treat the patient in the community voluntarily, so that the only recourse if things go wrong would be to resection the patient under the Act’s powers. I understand the debate about whether the definition used should confine the provision to what noble Lords have described as a ““revolving-door group””. Of course we will debate that at further stages of the Bill, but it would be fair to say that, if one were to limit the availability in the way that noble Lords have proposed, that would discriminate against those patients experiencing their first period of compulsory treatment and whose condition had improved to the point where, although they still required treatment, they no longer needed to be detained in hospital. There is a genuine debate to be had if noble Lords propose a further tightening of the definition. Let me make it clear that the patient’s responsible clinician cannot make this judgment on his own. An AMHP must agree that all the criteria are satisfied and that a community treatment order is appropriate for the patient. If the AMHP does not consider, for example, that the treatment order would work because of a patient’s family circumstances, he or she will not agree to it. The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, expressed concern that a doctor would not necessarily be involved, in relation to the definition of a responsible clinician. We debated that point on Monday. A responsible clinician will be a highly skilled and experienced professional who has been approved and trained for that particular role; they will have been selected for the patient because they have the right skills to match the patient’s particular treatment needs. The responsible clinician will have the overall responsibility for the patient’s case and will have the best overall knowledge of the patient’s current condition. Of course, the patient will already have been through the process of detention under Section 3—