Mental Health Bill [HL]

My Lords, I have added my name to the amendment. I do not want to speak further about the humanity behind it because I think that almost everyone in the House is agreed on that and it was well exposed today. I want to talk about the practicalities. I know that the Government are concerned about amendments that dictate how services should be provided and about the possible extra cost that might suddenly be imposed. In reality, however, we have imposed special legislation for, for example, high-security patients, maternity services and cancer services, so there is absolutely no reason why we should not dictate what services are necessary. In terms of practicality, what generally happens is that a child is admitted in an emergency; that is when the situation arises whereby they go into a completely unsuitable adult ward. In practice, all that has to happen is that the primary care trust agrees with the local mental health service that they will, for the moment, until the local facilities have been built, commission a certain number of emergency service beds. Indeed, that happens in most places where they commission emergency service beds from a range of young people’s facilities to ensure that in an emergency someone can make the decision about admission, and the money is there to fund it without question. The money is being spent already because the person is admitted, so you already have the charge against an admission. Although the cost of a child’s admission to a specialist unit is slightly higher, the cost overall is broadly similar. All the amendment would do is signal to mental health services and primary care trusts that they have to make the arrangements. It does not signify that they should make a different sort of service. This does not happen at the moment because of a handful of services that simply do not comply; it is evident from the Mental Health Act Commission reports that this is not a generalised problem but a problem with a very few authorities. We are not asking for anything complicated here. I support the amendment.