Mental Health Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the Minister for his reply, although I am not wholly content with it. He is obviously not entirely surprised to hear that, either. Let me say just a few things. First, given the very clear recommendation from the Joint Committee on Human Rights, when it said: "““We urge the Government to ensure that, whatever method of regulation is adopted, sufficient safeguards are included on the face of the bill””," it is extraordinary for the Government to say yet again that they think that this is better dealt with in the code of practice. I find that really quite worrying, because to some extent they are simply not listening. However, we have heard about the code of practice and will come to that later. Secondly, I fully accept that the guidance on seclusion is the NICE and the NIMHE guidance. I do not think that anyone has any particular quarrel with that, except that what the Minister said to me about wanting to leave it to clinical judgment has come up time and time again. This is not an area that one would normally expect to leave to clinical judgment, because it has nothing to do with treatment: it is being used simply to protect others from significant harm. That is very different from the normal use of clinical judgment in a treatment decision. This is an important point, which the Minister did not pick up. All noble Lords around the House are very concerned about attacks on NHS staff, but it is precisely because seclusion is used to protect others from significant harm that you want to be very clear about where it should be used—to protect staff and others from harm. Given the lateness of the hour, and having voiced some of my objections to some of what the Minister has said, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. I shall take this away and consider how we might come back, even at the very latest stage of the Bill—at Third Reading. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. [Amendment No. 72 not moved.]