Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, the parallel is that things amazingly go on in this country until they are stopped. The Girls’ Friendly Society long ago lost any reason for existing because the girls with whom it was friendly no longer existed in the situations and houses in which they were, yet it took a good 40 years to decide that it was time for it to go. I remember sitting next to a person who explained to me that the trains from Ipswich did not go to Manchester direct but went down to London because there was a row in about 1850 between the Great Eastern Railway and the Grand Central Railway. No one knew that that was the reason, so the trains still went along that route. It was only on privatisation that people started to look again and discovered why that was. I really do feel that this is exactly the same kind of situation. We have something that has a murky past anyway. The original history is not one that most of us would like to be associated with. It then proceeds, one Bill after another, even unto devolution, which is an amazing achievement. It really is like the famous story from the Army book. The authors found when they looked carefully that when the gun was being fired one man of the four did nothing at all. They sought the reason for that and discovered from a very old sergeant major that he was the man who held the horses. This is exactly the same kind of situation. Having someone who does nothing at all because at one time he would have held the horses is not such a terrible thing except that it ties up an extra soldier, but having something on the statute book that makes the distinction between physical and mental illness is deeply unacceptable. It is unacceptable for two reasons. There is already too much unkind, thoughtless and ignorant treatment of the mentally ill nationally and we need to stand against it. It is also another example of unnecessary discrimination. Of course, your Lordships’ House would not like me to point to the fact that no Catholic may ring a bell, still, because those discriminations still exist under our laws. Every time you try to change them, someone produces a frightfully good reason why Catholics would be ill-advised to ring bells. We must all stand very strongly against these hangovers from a less attractive attitude, both in the religious case and in the case with which the amendment is concerned—mental illness. It is a small thing. I am a great supporter of the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and we should get rid of this discrimination now.