Mental Health Bill [HL]

That just goes to show that practice varies. I thank noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. It is extremely important. I apologise for detaining the Chamber at this hour, but we must debate the matter. I listened with great care to what the Minister said. I think that he accused us of using the word semi-detached. I am not sure that that is a phrase that I would use. The important point that noble Lords were trying to convey is that by bringing forward a Bill which, by their own admission, is short and does not deal with a great deal of detail, the Government have chosen to leave substantial and important matters to the code of practice. Perhaps the Minister will concede that when a Bill is based not on principles but a code of practice in it, there is at the very least room for conflicting views on implementation. I also hope that the Minister will accept that noble Lords on this side of the Chamber in no way want to compromise the flexibility open to practitioners. That is why one of our suggestions is that there should be some flexibility—that is, that some parts of the code should be stated to have statutory force but others may not. There are precedents for that. The code of practice under Section 3 of the Disability Discrimination Act does precisely that. At the end of four and a half days of debate, I thank the Minister for making a clear statement that the Bill essentially sets out the legal processes for compulsion, not for services. That is why the code of practice is so important. It is different from other codes of practice attached to other legislation, because it deals with human rights concerns: matters such as seclusion and restraint. The Joint Committee on Human Rights has called for the code of practice to have statutory force for that reason. The Minister talked about there being frequent changes to the code of practice. My information is that the code of practice has in fact been changed only once.