Health and Social Care Bill

My Lords, I too support this amendment very strongly, and I think the Minister knows why. In my dealings with people with ME/CFS, I have found that many of them have been sectioned and put into wards that I can only describe as barbaric. There was one recent case where the man had a very clear physical illness and he spent nearly nine months in a hospital in Torbay—Torbay, the hospital that has been praised left, right and centre; but its mental ward is not worthy of praise. If the funding is equal for mental and physical treatment, this will somehow redress the balance. My mother was mentally ill for 17 years and she was treated barbarically by psychiatrists. She was hooked on barbiturates and she was given a leucotomy. I thought those days had gone but we are not far from them with the things that I have seen with ME patients.