Mental Health Bill [Lords]

Our estimate is several thousand, but, in any case, it is too many. I am afraid that there is a perverse incentive inherent in the treatability test—it is inherent in any test of the likely effect of treatment, rather than its purpose—for some patients to refuse to engage with treatment in the hope of proving that it will have no effect on their condition. The hon. Gentleman, who is muttering away on the Opposition Front Bench and clearly does not like my answer, needs to recognise that the treatability test is taken into account by the courts in sentencing offenders, as well as by clinicians in deciding whether detention is appropriate. I do not know whether he is aware of this, but let me refer the House to the case of a man called Richard Ley, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2005 for setting fire to his own flat in a suicide bid. The judge who sentenced him, Judge Sean Overend, said:"““You were trying to self harm and did not care about the safety of others. I pass the life sentence with a heavy heart because it seems to me that to send you to prison for life when you have a disorder within the Mental Health Act is an inept disposal. But it is forced on the court because the consultant psychiatrist says that your personal disorder is untreatable so I cannot make a hospital order.””" That is precisely what is wrong with the treatability test. [Interruption.] I do not know why Opposition Front-Bench Members seem to think that this is a matter for laughter. It was a tragic case. Modern clinical practice is that treatment is possible for people with personality disorders. The current combination of the four different categories of mental disorder—which we are going to get rid of—and the misunderstanding or current interpretation of the treatability test is having precisely the wrong effect.