Mental Health Bill [HL]

My Lords, it is always worth having another go to see if I can be bent if not broken into looking at a point again. The noble Baroness will know that I have met representatives from a number of organisations who raised thisissue with me. I thank them for their time and consideration in coming in to talk to me about it. I am not going to go as far as the noble Baroness wants, but I hope that in what I am able to say, she will be given enough comfort perhaps to offer me half a thank-you on behalf of herself and the noble Lord, Lord Rix. I agree completely with the principle lying behind all the noble Baroness has said: we want to deprive people of their liberty only for the shortest time possible. My first point is that that will be made perfectly clear in the code and training materials; it is absolutely essential. That is why we are setting the authorisation period on a case-by-case basis on the best interests assessor’s recommendation, which will be based on the person’s best interests in the particular circumstances and the likelihood of change. I will add material to the code stating that authorisation should be recommended for 12 months only if the assessor was confident that there is unlikely to be a change in the person’s circumstances within that period. There will be people—noble Lords will be able to think of them—about whom we can be sure that that is the case. The noble Baroness has expressed concern that people should not reach for the ultimate ability to go to 12 months when a shorter period would be better. The point was also made by the noble Earl, Lord Howe, in Committee. The review and Court of Protection safeguards mean that if the deprivation of liberty is no longer needed, it can and will be ended. We will make sure that information and support is provided for families and carers to ensure that they can be effective in helping their loved ones to make use of these safeguards, and we shall discuss that support later in our discussions this evening. I am therefore confident at this stage that we are putting in place everything required to deliver our aim of making sure that the deprivation of liberty does not continue longer than it has to. There will be no default to 12 months, so I do not support reducing the maximum period specified in the Bill because I do not want to have unnecessary assessments taking place. They would merely divert resources from frontline care. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, said in Committee said that we could not have it both ways. I could not say that the case would not arise for all that many people and then argue that it is a resource problem. The truth is that however many cases arise—I hope that there will be few, but there will be some—it is nevertheless still a resource issue, although I agree that it is not a huge one. I also do not want people or their families disturbed and unsettled in circumstances where it is quite clear that there will be no change, but I accept that providing a period of 12 months with no ability to change it does create an issue if I am proved to have been inaccurate in my assessment, or indeed if a period of six months was not correct, or that over time it is considered that we ought to be able to settle on another period. So I will ensure that when the Bill goes to another place, a power is taken in England and Wales to reduce—and only to reduce, not to increase—the maximum period at a future date if monitoring of the operation of the safeguards convinces the Government that this is necessary. The monitoring body will report to the Secretary of State and will include these statistics. That will be published and made available in the Libraries of both Houses, so the specific information gathered by the body looking at this issue will be put in the public domain. If that information leads to the conclusion that we need to amend the period of 12 months down to a lower figure in order to address anything that may have arisen, the power will be in place to do so. I hope that I have achieved by another route what the noble Baroness is seeking and that she feels able to withdraw her amendment.