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Mental Health Act 2007
In March 2006, the government announced it was to take a fresh approach to the thorny issue of mental health legislation.
Health minister Rosie Winterton said it was to scrap the lengthy draft Mental Health Bill of 2004 and replace it with a new, shorter amending Bill to “radically overhaul mental health law.”
Winterton said during a speech in March: “I think we have good reason to be optimistic about the future of mental health care and mental health advocacy in England and I hope that we will continue to work together to build a service of which we can all be proud.”
The new Bill would amend the Mental Health Act 1983 to “help ensure that people with serious mental health problems receive the treatment they need to protect them and others from harm.”
There would also be changes to the Mental Capacity Act to introduce provisions for people with a mental disorder who “lack capacity and who are deprived of their liberty but are not under mental health legislation.”
Key proposals laid out by the government are the introduction of Supervised Community Treatment for some patients discharged from compulsory treatment in hospital; and the introduction of a new definition of mental disorder, as well as a new treatment test to replace the “treatability test.”
Having been successfully navigated through the House of Lords, the Mental Health Bill had its first reading in the House of Commons on March 7 2007.
During its second reading in the House of Commons, the Health minister Patricia Hewitt explained that “supervised community treatment' lay at the heart of the Mental Health Bill.
She stated that the Bill, would enable "a patient who is detained in hospital to be released under supervised community treatment, enabling some patients to be discharged into the community earlier than would otherwise be the case—a real benefit for them and, often, for their carers, too."
The Bill, under its original terms faced strong opposition from the Conservatives, with opposition spokesperson for health, Tim Loughton stating that “clinicians would be turned into jailers.”
Loughton also stated that the Bill “is counter-productive, in that it threatens to deter people with a mental illness from presenting in the first place, thereby driving mental illness underground.”
The Bill was subsequently scrutinised by the Mental Health Bill Committee and it is due to have its remaining stages [report stage and third reading] on June 18 and 19.
The government has, this week, [ June 15 2007 ] tabled amendments to the Mental Health Bill designed to strengthen the rights of patients and the public.
The amendments aim to:-
- ensure that children and young people receive treatment for a mental disorder in an environment that is suitable for their age and geared to meet their needs;
- build on a commitment (made in November) to ensure that, within two years, no child under 16 years of age is treated on an adult ward;
- introduce statutory advocacy services to support patients detained under the Mental Health Act and to champion their rights;
- give more rights for victims of convicted mentally disordered offenders (such as the right to know when offenders are discharged back into the community and the right to make representations about their discharge);
- ensure that conditions can only be placed on a person who is on supervised community treatment (SCT) in order to ensure that they receive treatment to prevent the risk of harm to their health or safety, or to protect other people.
Progress
House of Lords
First reading: November 16 2006 [HL Bill 1]
Second reading: November 28 2006
Committee of the Whole House:
Report:
Third reading: March 6 2007
House of Commons
First reading: March 7 2007 [HC Bill 76]
Second Reading: April 16 2007
Mental Health Bill Committee:
Remaining stages:
House of Lords
Consideration of Commons Amendments: July 2 2007
House of Commons
Consideration of Lords Amendments: July 4 2007
Royal Assent: July 19 2007
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