Mental Health Bill [HL]

My Lords, briefly, I support the noble Earl, Lord Howe, on the amendment. I do not want to repeat what I said in Committee, but many of our discussions throughout the passage of the Bill have been intended to ensure that people who are really in need of care and treatment have it made available to them. All of us have that concern, but we have approached it in different ways. In refusing the exclusions, the Government are misguidedly trying to draw into mental health services a much broader range of people who at present would be excluded and whom, mostly, we would want to be excluded. I remember the wonderful tease of the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, over the auto-erotic strangulation case, which somewhat confused the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, at the time. That was a wonderful example of how very many sexual perversions and fetishisms there are. We know that there are eccentricities that we do not want included in treatment where there is no defined mental disorder. I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Soley, that where there is a mental disorder exhibited through an obsessional behaviour that is criminal or distressing, that ought to be included, but it is perfectly possible to make that distinction. Most common law jurisdictions across the developed world have such exclusions, for very good reason. We have forgotten how very recently it is that people complained that too many people were drawn into mental health legislation through an overbroad interpretation of the Act. That is why we have the exclusions: to define exactly whom we are trying to detain in this way to help them. I strongly support the amendment.