Mental Health Bill [HL]

My Lords, I shall have one more attempt, if I may, to try to persuade the House that the Government are more right than wrong, although as I said when I last spoke on this subject, they may not have gone far enough. We may need clearer legislation. I understand fully the position of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and I respect it. He feels very strongly on the principle of the issue and has a very good track record both on civil rights and on understanding their context in society. I want simply to try to balance the arguments for and against. A perennial problem in mental health issues is that because we do not have as clear a definition as we would like, particularly on personality disorder, we move around trying to find the right position. Over time, the only thing about which we can be certain is that we have got it wrong some of the time and have sought to adjust it. On balance, of course, we tend to make some quite good decisions, too. I agree with a comment in one of the letters that the Minister sent to Members of the Committee—that personality disorder is a definition of exclusion in too many cases. It excludes people from treatment. I therefore say straight away that the position of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and those who support his position is that the Bill as currently presented risks creating a situation in which people will be treated inappropriately. In a previous debate, the noble Lord, Lord Winston, gave an example of a case where inappropriate action was taken. It was a good example, and that does happen. Let me be clear: I am not saying that there is not a danger of that. I ask the supporters of the amendment to take into account the other side of that equation—that many people with personality disorders who could be treated are at the moment not being treated. They are not being treated not only because no facilities are available; too often they are not being treated because the phrase ““they are not treatable”” is used. I am not citing only the examples that I gave when I last spoke on this issue. I do not call in evidence my previous experience as a probation officer 30-odd years ago, but I do cite the experience of many Members of Parliament who have to deal with difficult cases in which they receive letters from health authorities saying, ““Sorry—we are not prepared to treat””. Yet everybody knows that a treatment is available for those people. Those supporting the amendment are very strong on the patient’s right not to be treated and pretty strong on doctors’ rights not to treat people if they do not want to, but they are very weak on treating those who need treatment. They are playing into a situation that has troubled the mental health field for far too long, whereby a dustbin label is put on someone—the original label was psychopathy, but it is now personality disorder—saying that they cannot get better and are untreatable, so nothing is done about it. In reality, treatments are now available. As I said earlier, I am sometimes troubled that we pay too little attention in these debates to other treatments available from psychologists. Psychologists often, although not always, have a longer period of training than many psychiatrists. It is important to get the balance right. The noble Lord shakes his head. There are examples of psychiatrists having shorter training periods than psychologists. It is not a crucial argument because we know that there are no absolutes in any of this. We are dealing with behaviour. As for the definitional problem, the fact is that mental illness exists. It can be shown in an individual standing alone in certain circumstances. Much mental illness, however, takes place in a social setting and comes to our attention only because of its impact on society. That cannot be ignored. As the Government and noble Lords have rightly said, you should not treat a person for a mental illness simply because of something that is happening in society unless it can also be shown that there is a problem for the person. But many cases of personality disorder, particularly when the impact is felt in the local community, are distressing for the individual, too. They might not express it by saying ““I am distressed”” when they are causing amazing problems for those around them or attacking people in the street or whatever. They may be very defensive about what they are doing and claim to be perfectly rational, but that happens also with other aspects of mental illness. Personality disorder is not the only situation where the person denies an illness or condition that could be treated, to put it more appropriately. I accept that there is a problem with calling personality disorder an illness, but I do not accept that there is a problem with saying that personality disorder can be treated. It might not be cured in the full sense of the term, although even that could be arguable, but the situation could certainly be alleviated. When I last spoke on this I gave a couple of examples of the impact on the community, which we cannot ignore. The impact, particularly in stressed, inner-city areas, comes to the attention of Members of Parliament because the person’s behaviour becomes so extreme that others are frightened by it—and often rightly frightened; it is not imaginary. People may find the behaviour so disturbing that they try to remove themselves from the setting although they can see, and will often say, that the person concerned is ““mad””. They use the term in the conventional way that society uses it. They express total amazement when they are shown a letter from the health authority saying that the person has an ““untreatable personality disorder””. They see the impact of the personality disorder. If the individual lived on a desert island or in the middle of nowhere, the behaviour would probably not be noticed. But that does not mean that the individual is not a distressed person who requires treatment. The social and community aspect is important. Debates in this place are good because they are so often fed by experts with expert knowledge. But one of the advantages that the House of Commons has over the House of Lords, not always having that expert knowledge and having other agendas as well, is that it picks up this sort of issue on the street. The other week I gave those examples because they are real cases causing real distress to people who are not being treated, as well as to the community. I say to those who support the amendment that my argument essentially is that the other side of the patient’s right to refuse treatment and the doctor’s rights to refuse to get involved with difficult cases such as personality disorder is that those who are not being treated but could be treated, should be treated. There is an element of principle there. Personality disorder has for far too long been used as a means of excluding people from treatment and ignoring the impact on the community. We then get horrific headlines in the tabloids about a person who has killed someone after being turned away from a hospital because they were labelled as untreatable. I have had plenty of battles with the press generally and with the tabloids in particular about how they present stories, including stories on mental health. When I presented my Bill in the House of Commons 10 or 15 years ago on the freedom and responsibilities of the press, we took evidence from, among others, those who represent mental health patients, because of the way in which those patients were presented in the press. But however bad those stories are, if we fall into the trap of saying ““Oh, we must just ignore the press on this,”” we also end up ignoring the important reality of the underlying story for those who are affected by it. We cannot afford to do that. That is the difference between being an MP and a Member of the House of Lords—as an MP you pick up these issues on the street. It is there; it is not imaginary. Finally, I ask the Government to think hard about another issue. Shortly after I came to this place I proposed that the two Houses should consider a reform to enable the two Houses to conduct post-legislative scrutiny of Acts. We are now some way towards that. I have been arguing for some time that the Lords could play a premier role in that task, because noble Lords would be very good at looking how legislation is working. If, as I hope, that becomes possible in the not-too-distant future, I hope that my noble friend on the Front Bench will volunteer this Bill for post-legislative scrutiny. I think that the Bill will work well on balance although there are one or two difficult areas where we may have to revisit it. I may be proved wrong and there will be cases where people are treated inappropriately, and that should trouble us; but perhaps those who take the opposite view will be proved wrong and the Bill will be shown as too weak in insisting that those who need treatment should get it. That is necessary not just for them but for the community, always on the understanding—the critical base point—that the treatment must be a hopeful concept for the individual who is in distress.