Mental Health Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 78: 78: Schedule 6, page 101, line 20, at end insert— ““(ab) skills, (ac) training,”” The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendment No. 79. These amendments enable us to increase our ability to prescribe the training and skills of assessors. Schedule 6 to the Mental Health Bill provides for the insertion of Schedule A1 into the Mental Capacity Act 2005.Part 9 of Schedule A1 contains provisions about assessments under the schedule. Included withinPart 9 is a power to make regulations about the selection and eligibility of people to carry out assessments under the schedule. The Bill, as currently drafted, states that the regulations may make provisions about the qualifications and experience of assessors. We would like to widen the regulation-making power to enable the Secretary of State and the National Assembly for Wales to specify training that assessors must have undertaken in order to be qualified to carry out the various deprivation of liberty assessments, and the skills that assessors must have. For England, we will develop training modules that will link to the Mental Capacity Act training programme and a competence framework for deprivation of liberty assessors that will be consistent with competences being developed for professionals fulfilling similar roles under the Mental Health Act. With regard to Wales, this will be a matter for the National Assembly for Wales and the regulations prepared by it. We believe that the extension of the regulation-making power is important in enabling us to ensure that people undertaking assessments in connection with the deprivation of liberty safeguards are properly qualified to do so, and that the training and skills of assessors are the same everywhere in the country. I hope, therefore, that noble Lords will accept the amendments. On Question, amendment agreed to.