My Lords, I do not think any noble Lord wishes to see Tasers used in hospital settings except under the most extreme circumstances. However, I am very persuaded by what I have heard from other noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Dear. I would like to put the position slightly from the point of view of the patient. When I was a young man, I had quite a lot of experience of psychiatric wards—not, I hasten to add, as an inmate—and they can be terrifying places of extreme violence.
This amendment would mean that police officers could not use a Taser. I can foresee circumstances where somebody gets hold of a kitchen knife, for example, and is in a volatile state, the kind of volatile state that people who have not seen this kind of mania find hard to imagine. It is truly terrifying. We have to
give some credit to people who are managing the situation. Given the information we have just heard from the noble Lord, Lord Harris, I would like to think that the police are acting responsibly, so we have to assume that somebody assesses the situation and decrees that it is so dangerous that the best way of not harming the mental patient any further is to use a Taser. I really cannot see how we could stop the police having that possibility at their disposal.
My concern is very much from the point of view of the patient, but there are occasions when a Taser just might be in the best interests of the patient.