Mental Health Bill [HL]

My Lords, this has been a short but highly interesting debate. I sense that the House wishes to come to a view on this subject as quickly as possible. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Williamson, for his very kind remarks. He has raised some serious matters about the way in which children and young people are treated by our mental health services under the legislation. He identified, as did the noble Earl, Lord Howe, some of the real challenges in ensuring that appropriate services are provided to these vulnerable young people. I also very much take the point that the right reverend Prelate made; he raised the concern that, traditionally and historically, mental health services have not received their due. As he put it, statutory provision is a way of ensuring that that happens. Noble Lords will be weary of me expressing concerns about, in essence, putting statutory requirements in the Bill to provide services, but that is a genuine issue that has to be faced up to. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, referred to one of the best debates that I have taken part in; it took place in your Lordships’ House on Friday. I very foolishly tempted the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, to engage with me on the issue of palliative care services. On Friday, all of us—apart from me, once again—were arguing that palliative care is so important. I could have taken the words that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, used about mental health services in Committee and simply inserted the words ““palliative care””. There are six areas for short debate on today’s selection list, all of which will be very interesting if we get to them. However, in all of them, noble Lords will argue that those are the areas that deserve priority. There is a genuine issue about how to provide these services, which are so important. We are dealing with such vulnerable people and there have clearly been major defects in the provision of services in the past; I refer to young people being looked after on adult psychiatric wards although they are vulnerable in the way that the noble Earl, Lord Howe, described. Those are major challenges but they are not solved simply by waving the magic wand of legislation that says, ““That will happen no more””. That is the issue that separates us. We have discussed Scotland on a number of occasions and all of us are interested in, and will be interested in observing in the years ahead, the different approaches and the lessons to be learnt from each system. Section 23 of the Scottish mental health Act requires a child to be placed in age-appropriate accommodation. However, that has not led to the ending of children being placed on adult psychiatric wards in Scotland. My understanding is that the Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland reported in the past quarter that admissions of children to non-specialist wards including adult wards had risen, not fallen. That is not a criticism that I make of Scotland or the Scottish approach. All I suggest is that noble Lords should bear in mind that simply passing legislation that says, ““It will not happen””, does not mean that the service automatically follows.