Mental Health Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 65A: 65A: Schedule 6 , page 103, line 28, leave out from ““representative”” to end of line 29 and insert ““before any assessment is undertaken”” The noble Earl said: The amendment would ensure that a relevant person’s representative was appointed in time for them to contribute to the assessments as opposed to what appear to be the Government’s proposals for the appointment to be made after an authorisation is granted. The reasoning behind our amendment is that the representative should be appointed when assessments are commissioned, particularly before the best interests assessment is carried out, so that the representative can inform the authorisation process. A person’s representative is likely to be a family member, a friend or someone who knows the person well, who will be in a good position to advise on a patient’s wishes and feelings and especially on their best interests. The Government’s proposals in briefing documents and the Explanatory Notes state that the representative will be appointed only after an authorisation has been made. On the face of it, that seems at odds with paragraph 125 of Schedule 6, which states that information or submissions from a person’s representative or IMCA advocate must be taken into account during assessments, when doing so would obviously be impossible if a representative cannot be appointed at that stage. A separate paragraph in Schedule 6, paragraph 49(6), deals with future assessments after an authorisation has already occurred, with all the necessary assessments. That also states that information from the representative should be taken into account, so it would be valuable to hear from the Government why a representative should be involved in future assessments for authorisations but not the first one. The original Bournewood case is often quite instructive. It is not clear at what point in the authorisation process the person who is being deprived of liberty would be enabled to object through their advocate or representative. In the Bournewood case, would HL’s carers, as representatives, have been able to express his objection and ensure that his objection was accepted? That is quite a telling test. The amendment links to the wider issue of the role of family members and the representatives of people in the Bournewood gap. It would be valuable to hear of any further steps that the Government would be willing to take to strengthen the role of representatives in the process. I beg to move.