Patient Data: Research

Baroness Murphy Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

My Lords, I take this opportunity provided to us by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, to talk about the data for research for the greatest health challenge of our time—dementia. We need to improve the quality, accessibility and use of dementia data to support research, which is in an extremely poor state. We identify people too late, if at all. There is poor follow-up and data linkage, and difficulty matching people to the right trials. One problem is that people get referred to memory clinics over here, often remote from hospital services there. That is good for access, but where there are no links to research organisations, diagnosis is rarely followed up and, if you have a mild problem, you are never seen again. There is a wholesale lack of understanding that if you wish to research dementia, you need to understand that social care services, both statutory and independent providers, are where the subjects are. Coding is inconsistent. Data is often unusable. Those eligible for clinical trials are invisible to research, so recruitment to trials is very low indeed.

Over the four years from 2021 to 2025, dementia trials recruited only 551 participants, compared with 24,000 in cancer. The UK has strong basic sciences, major data resources, early phase trial capability and a trusted regulatory environment. However, the science is moving rapidly, and while the UK now has a major opportunity to build on these strengths and become a global leader in dementia research, we are very constrained by the lack of national leadership to align the science, diagnostics and trial delivery. We are even further away from the NHS adopting results and realising the full value of government investment.

Governments since the early 1920s have done some very positive things. The Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Goals programme in 2022 and the Medical Research Council’s £20 million investment into a dementia trials accelerator were excellent initiatives, but we need to go further and faster. Does the Minister agree that we should use the modern service framework to improve the quality and usability of dementia data and ensure that people are not lost to research after diagnosis? BARBARA is the brain ageing registry for biomarkers, access to trials, research and adoption—it is a marvellous name; I would love to know who thought that up. Surely the Government should make BARBARA a government priority by 2030. I ask for that to happen.

NHS: Dementia Treatment Trials

Baroness Murphy Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2026 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Murphy]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to assess and prioritise investment in trials of new dementia treatments in the NHS.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Merron) (Lab)]

My Lords, across the last five financial years, the Government have spent more than £555 million on dementia research, including into dementia diagnostics and trials of potential treatments. We are working for Britain to be at the forefront of transforming treatments and a world leader in dementia trials expertise. We are prioritising that through investment in the UK Dementia Trials Network and the Dementia Trials Accelerator.

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

I am very grateful to the Minister for that update. Dementia is now the most prevalent mental disorder in the country and the leading cause of death in women. I think she will agree with me that, at the moment, only 30% of dementia cases ever get diagnosed. If we are to benefit from some of the new developments in treatments, which I recognise are not yet as efficacious as we would like, there has to be some more investment in ensuring that people get an early diagnosis, so that patients can not only be linked into trials as they come up but get the help and social support that they—and their families, of course—will need. Does the Minister have any plans to increase the dementia diagnosis rate?

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

We do indeed, and I certainly agree with the noble Baroness. A timely diagnosis is absolutely vital to make sure that people with dementia can access everything they need, live well and remain independent for as long as possible. We are committed to recovering the dementia diagnosis rate to the national figure of 66.7%, and as of 31 March the figure stood at 66.3%. That is an increase from the time before and we will continue, through developing the modern service framework, to drive that upwards.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Murphy Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 20th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

First, it is said on both sides that they want more money for palliative care, but we now know that palliative care includes assisted dying. I therefore do not accept that the demand for more money for palliative care from those in favour of this Bill is the same thing as those of us who are asking for more money for palliative care so there is a proper choice.

Secondly, the issue is not whether the people of Wales should make the decision on the issue of assisted suicide; the issue is whether decisions made on that subject—which have to be made, because the noble Lord is perfectly right that the legal issue is not devolved—should be made in circumstances in which the application and implementation of those decisions are excluded from the powers that the Welsh Government have. All we are saying here is that those are two different things. I accept entirely what the noble Lord said about the need to make a national decision because of criminal law. However, I am saying that the sponsors of this Bill have got to face that it will ask the Welsh to give up the important control they have in circumstances in which they are already impoverished by the way in which they are supported and where they have particular difficulties with what we call palliative care—not that which the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, calls palliative care.

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I knew I would do that. I am sorry. I will not refer to the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy.

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

My Lords, could I make it clear to noble Lords that, in the best legislatures that have implemented similar legislation to this one—and I am thinking of Oregon, the State of Washington and so on—assisted dying is a small part, a very tiny part, of a good palliative care service, and it is best delivered when people who have been caring for somebody through the course of their terminal illness are enabled to make that final choice in their own time when they are ready. That is the point I was making then, and which holds today. I did not say that it was part of palliative care here. It certainly is not at the moment; I would like it to be, but it is not.

The only other point I would like to make is that we have been referring throughout this debate to the Scottish vote. Is it not lovely that the Scots could make a vote? We will not have the opportunity to make a vote in this House due to people going on and on about Wales and matters we have already discussed many times and have already had explained to us. It seems to me that we are just wasting time and we will never get to a vote. I realise that is what some in the House would like, but it is sadly the case that we will never get to the point where we can make a decision in this House about whether we support this legislation or not.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I am pleased that I gave time for the noble Baroness to talk, given that she thinks all of this is nitpicking. I remind the House that is what she said about the work we are doing. The fact is—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

We have discussed this issue at some length before, but I wonder if the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, has considered that the Bill does not say anything about a definite diagnosis. The phrase is “can reasonably be expected”. It does not mean that anybody has to agree with a diagnosis that it will be four, five or six months, or any particular time; it is “can reasonably be expected”.

I would like to come back on the noble Lord’s issue about people with a positive attitude. Does he accept that it is not just people with a very positive attitude who have good expectations? There are now numerous studies of people with breast cancer showing that the alternative, to totally deny it, also has a slightly better prognosis. There are different ways of approaching these bad news prognoses and people can adapt their own way of dealing with issues from them. I hope he will note that.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I am now precluded from taking further interventions, because there is a limit on how long I can speak and that was a very excessive intervention. I will discuss with the noble Baroness outside the Chamber what a reasonable expectation is, if it is not based on a prognosis. I do not know what the functional difference is. As for being in denial, funnily enough, an oncologist said to me that being a bit in denial is quite a good thing. In my own case, I managed to combine a positive attitude and a certain sense of denial; I agree that these things can work. It is quite complicated. But none the less, I am going to continue with what I wanted to say.

Thirdly, the title of Professor Gould’s article was, quite subtly, The Median Isn’t the Message. Yet at the heart of the Bill is a six-month prognosis—we may call it a reasonable expectation—in which that is exactly the message. It is that flawed message which we are making the heart of the Bill.

Lastly, I think we are all agreed that a positive attitude can help, even if denial can help as well, but in using this Bill, we do not inculcate a positive attitude. What we actually say is: “You have six months to live and here is the pills option. That’s another option you can take”. We should be promoting a positive attitude, and the Bill does not do that.

My Amendments 175 and 384 simply require that in the three doctor encounters that are required—in the preliminary discussion, with the co-ordinating doctor and with the independent doctor—there is an explanation of the underlying mathematics or, if you like, the underlying data of the condition that the person has as part of the conversation. The amendments would make that mandatory, so that the idea that the six-month diagnosis is a prediction is not lodged in the mind of the patient.

Professor Gould died in 2002. That was 20 years after his original diagnosis, and he did not die of mesothelioma. In my own case, I took Professor Gould’s article to my oncologist—it was our second meeting—and I said that, in the light of his experience, I was not satisfied with 18 months, that my target was 20 years and that anything less I would consider failure. It seems to have worked because, within three months of the diagnosis, I was discovered to be in complete metabolic remission, a condition I have stayed in. If you have had stage 4 cancer, they will not use the word “cured”, but I am as close to cured as you can be, and I am in complete metabolic remission. I still have 18 years to go on the bargain I struck with my oncologist.

I occasionally hear rather rude remarks about Dame Esther Rantzen—that she was given so long to live and she is still alive years later. I never share those comments; I reject that attitude completely. There are lots of people, such as her and me, who live out there in the farther reaches of the third standard deviation, with our heads hard up against the roof of the bell curve. That is natural because, as Professor Gould says, variation is the reality and the prognosis—the median—is the abstraction.

We have put something false and misleading at the heart of this Bill. There are very few conditions for a person to embark on a course that leads them to an assisted death; one is residence, one is capacity and one is this six-month prognosis. We have put this right at the heart of the Bill, and it is, as I say, false and misleading. It is a fundamental flaw in the Bill, and I would like noble Lords to reflect on that and I hope, on that basis, at the very least, agree my amendments. I beg to move.

Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill

Baroness Murphy Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 14th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Loan (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my registered interest as a trustee of St John & St Elizabeth Hospital in London.

The first clause sets the tone for the rest of the Bill. It has so many deficiencies and such inherent danger that it has rendered necessary the tabling of so many amendments. Multiple amendments were, of course, tabled in Committee in the other place, but they were not permitted to be debated or voted on. Our duty is therefore to scrutinise the Bill, not to meet arbitrary timetables and a limited number of Committee days. We have to do it properly, because on this work that we do rest questions of life and death.

Clause 1 deals with the “who”; who can decide to end their life with medical support or to be assisted to end their own life when they cannot do it themselves. The definition of “who” is simple and sparse. It demands only that someone has capacity, has reached the age of 18, is ordinarily resident here and is registered with a GP. Clause 1 also deals with what is required—the process for determining. It requires that any decision made by a person who fits the definition in Clause 1 is made by someone with

“a clear, settled and informed wish to end their own life, and … has made the decision … voluntarily”,

and who is not the product of coercion or pressure. We will come to that, but it is not enough.

The decision to end one’s own life is the most profound decision that one can make. One might argue that some decisions are not as immediately serious. If, in a fit of despair or loss of hope, I decide to refuse treatment, I might still change my mind. Similarly, if I stop eating, I may choose to reverse that decision. If I decide to end my life, there is no coming back and no reconsideration, and that is why it is such an important matter.

I think the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, referred to advanced directives in these provisions, by which people can declare their future care, but the decision to refuse treatment and go for a natural death is not a proactive decision to end life. There is no precedent for the Mental Capacity Act being used for a decision to end life.

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

I would like to briefly intervene, because every day of the week there are hundreds of decisions made in the NHS and independent care about life and death. I will give a very brief example. My brother has had renal failure for 40 years. He has been brilliantly looked after by Guy’s Hospital, and, after the failure of the last transplant, he has been on dialysis for the last five years. It has become more and more wearing and disabling for him, and he has decided that, by Christmas, he would like to make the final decision, with the help and the support that he is getting from the Guy’s team, to end his life.

He is supported in that by his wife, brother, sister and children. We have supported him to make his own decision. It is a life and death decision that he will be supported through. That is the way it happens, day in, day out, in the health service. It is a nonsense to say that life and death decisions are not made. Furthermore, what test will they use? They will use the Mental Capacity Act.

[Baroness O'Loan (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness has told us a very sad story about her brother, but it really is not on the issue that I am speaking of today. It is, of course, the case that decisions about life and death are made. What I am saying is that, in this case, the decision is to ask the state to enable the person to administer that, and for the state to bring all the forces and resources available to do it. That is what we are debating today: does the Bill provide a situation in which “capacity” is the correct term to use in this clause?

I support Amendment 2. The use of the word “capacity” is undoubtedly provided for in the Mental Capacity Act. This Bill says that

“references to a person having capacity are to be read in accordance with the Mental Capacity Act”,

which is very helpful. The Mental Capacity Act was not passed to deal with the decision to end one’s own life, but rather it was formulated with the basic assumption that a person has capacity. In November 2021, the Supreme Court said in A Local Authority v JB:

“‘A person must be assumed to have capacity unless it is established that he lacks capacity’”.


It continued:

“This principle requires all dealings with persons who have an impairment of, or a disturbance in the functioning of, the mind or brain to be based on the premise that every individual is competent until the contrary is proved. … Competence is decision-specific so that capacity is judged in relation to the particular decision, transaction or activity involved. P may be capable of making some decisions, but not others”.


Therefore, there are circumstances in which capacity cannot be assumed and a person may not be capable of understanding, to the necessary extent, the information that should underpin any decision-making, or of analysing the consequences of that information or of making a decision in their own best interests. When these conditions are not fulfilled, the Mental Capacity Act requires, in particular circumstances, that a decision be made by a third party, but always in the best interests of the person. As the Royal College of Psychiatrists told us in evidence,

“an assessment of a person’s mental capacity to decide to end their own life is an entirely different and more complex determination requiring a higher level of understanding”

than assessing capacity for treatment decisions.

We have received very helpful evidence from Professor Gareth Owen, Professor Alex Ruck Keene, and Professor Katherine Sleeman of the Complex Life and Death Decisions group at King’s College London. They have stated quite clearly that

“the MCA 2005 was not designed to be a universal framework for determining capacity.  It is primarily a workaround for the inability of a person to give consent to actions required to secure their health and social care needs. In the MCA 2005, the principles applying to and the test for capacity apply in a context where a decision can be taken on a ‘best interests’ basis for the person if they lack capacity”.

In the context of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, they state that,

“no such best interests decision could ever be made”.

Capacity is not a constant state. It may fluctuate depending on a variety of circumstances, including some illnesses, disabilities and the side-effects of medication. A person can have capacity in relation to one decision and not another. A person may have capacity at one time, but not another. It is an enormously complex issue. When the decision in question is the decision to end one’s own life, capacity to make that decision requires very significant analysis in each case at the time in question.

That is the reason why “capacity” is not an adequate word to deal with the situation in which a person is coming to make a clear, settled, and informed decision. “Capacity” cannot be the test. “Ability” is a wider test, and there will be opportunity for the Committee to consider what that might look like as we go through future groups.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Gove (Con)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. Again, there has been some debate about the evidence from psychiatrists and the reasons why they expressed doubts, but that evidence is plentifully available to Members of this House.

As a number of Members have made clear, the work of Alex Ruck Keene KC and the Complex Life and Death Decisions group of King’s College, which is available to this House and was examined in the Select Committee, makes it clear that the Mental Capacity Act is inadequate. It is inadequate to deal with the concept of suicidal ideation that occurs. It is inadequate to deal with the fact that capacity fluctuates, and that fluctuation can be affected by mental health and well-being in its broadest sense, as well as by other syndromes and conditions.

The psychiatrists would not have intervened as they did if they had felt that this was a matter that could be left to one side, a matter that was entirely, as it were, within the scope of parliamentarians or legislators to shrug their shoulders and to accept. They have sent a message to us that the Bill as framed endangers those who are most vulnerable. Can we really proceed on the basis of the MCA, a piece of legislation conceived at a different time for a different purpose and rendered in the eyes of the professionals as not the correct way to go forward?

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

My Lords, I wish to comment on the previous statement made by the noble Lord, Lord Gove. I am a fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and I must have used the Mental Capacity Act dozens of times throughout my career. Capacity assessment, and how to do one, is included in very extensive codes of practice and in the training that people have. It includes ability in those things that have been mentioned. You need to know whether somebody has understood those elements that go to make up capacity to make a specific decision. It is a tried and tested piece of legislation. I will come back to it when we get to the amendments to Clause 3, but there is nothing in the capacity assessment that excludes making an appropriate judgment or having a really good understanding of the ability of the individual to grasp what is being proposed and all those things around it. It takes account of fluctuation—remember that this has to be a settled decision, and it takes account of that.

I did not want to say this, but noble Lords should understand that there has been internal politics inside the Royal College of Psychiatrists. There has been a serious shift towards against supporting this Bill, not since it came to the House but because of a change of personnel at the top of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. The individuals who made up the report that now comes to the House, both from the GLAD group and from, for example, Dr Annabel Price. She has a personal view that she does not like the principles of the Bill and would not support it.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

It is very important that we understand where these reports come from. This one is issued by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, but it has not been subjected to scrutiny by the members. Although they have many good points, and we can look carefully at their recommendations and assess them properly, we need to make a decision ourselves.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. I have a practical question to ask. Do other doctors get training on what is meant by “capacity”?

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

There is never enough training—let us assess that.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

If I may help the noble Baroness, the answer is that the Oliver McGowan training—which is a statutory requirement for all doctors—is now in place. It is high-level training on both capacity and of dealing with people who are vulnerable.

[Baroness Scotland of Asthal (Lab)]

My Lords, I have hesitated to intervene at this point because we are going to come later to talk about capacity and why the Mental Capacity Act and its definition does not fit well with this Bill. I am disappointed in the way in which the last few comments have turned this debate, not least because all of us belong to professional bodies which express collective views on our behalf and have to be respected. It is disappointing that we should have in this House an attack on a view which is expressed by a professional body in this way.

However, there are real reason as to why the Mental Capacity Act is seen as having deficiency in this context, which it normally does not have. It is a fine piece of legislation that we were very proud to introduce, and it has given liberty, capacity and the opportunity to be heard to many people who had limited capacity in the past. I give quarter to no one about the power of that Act.

But is the Mental Capacity Act perfect when we come to consider this particular issue? It is not. Why is it not? Because you can have and suffer from a mental illness and still have capacity. Yet we know that, when individuals are faced with the terrible diagnosis that they are to die, and their families are distraught, and they themselves have to face that reality, depression is not abnormal; it is normal. The fact is that some of those people, many of whom we know, some of whom are within our families, some of whom have suffered deeply, contemplate whether it would not be simpler, easier, less painful for everyone if they simply ended their lives. But what else do we know? We know that, when that depression bites, there is means of alleviation. We know that, with good palliative care, they can be enabled to make an informed decision. That informed decision may be that they still want to take a step, but the opportunity to get that support is essential.

Yet when we look at the capacity Act, the fact that someone is deeply depressed does not mean that they lack capacity within the meaning of the Act—

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

It does.

[Baroness Scotland of Asthal (Lab)]

If we look at what Professor Foster and others have said, they say that the Mental Health Act 1983 is the sort of assessment that a psychiatrist should make as to whether they are in a position to make that decision. It is not just the MCA on its own—

Goodmayes Hospital Mental Health Facility

Baroness Murphy Excerpts

Thursday 13th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for raising this in this way. National guidance is being developed, which is expected soon—in January—on plastic bag use in mental health settings. The Thirlwall inquiry has also recently reviewed progress against the important recommendations of the report of Professor Williams, which were very much addressed at the role of healthcare regulators of NHS bodies and the CPS. In addition, the NHS national oversight framework now gives a transparent assessment of the performance of every trust in England, which means that those with the greatest challenges or concerns will receive enhanced support. In addition, it means that the CQC, as we move it to a new intelligence-led model, is able to conduct rapid response inspections where concerns are identified, so that we can get on top of problems before they produce the tragic consequences my noble friend refers to.

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

My Lords, would the Minister agree with me that, while it is 10 years since Alice Figueiredo died, we know that resources in mental health services in-patient units—in terms of human resources particularly, but the number of beds they have access to as well—have deteriorated dramatically? We heard very potent evidence during the passage of the Mental Health Bill this year of the serious consequences that have arisen from this. What are we going to do to improve the quality and quantity of resources available to mental health units, so that occurrences like this do not recur?

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

As the noble Baroness will be aware, I take a broader approach. The current in-patient model is totally outdated and cannot address adequately the inherent risks in the mental health in-patient system, so we have to move to new models of care which are integrated in the community. Those changes will be made as part of the 10-year plan. Importantly for me, that will mean a new era of transparency as well as that rigorous focus on patient safety and care and also hearing and acting on patient and staff voices.

Prostate Cancer

Baroness Murphy Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

My Lords, as a doctor, I have witnessed many men living with prostate cancer and cared for them. It has been heartening over the last 30 years to see the dramatic improvement in survival—good survival—of prostate cancer. My own husband was treated successfully for an aggressive prostate tumour 17 years ago, following an entirely fortuitous PSA test. But as we have heard and as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, has reminded us, PSA testing is not perfect; surely it will be superseded soon by something better. The 20% reduction in mortality through PSA screening has surely been won very well, but at a very high price in the side-effects of treatment by surgery and radiology, and in urinary incontinence and erectile dysfunction, which very few urological services in the UK take seriously enough to treat, even though they can be successfully treated.

Going back to the PSA test, there are now risk calculators to help GPs and patients assess whether the test is worth it. As has already been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Mott, male patients do not go to the GP unless they are forced to and they have symptoms. They do not like to go through the 8 o’clock scramble—how many of us do? We are light-years away, therefore, from the discussions that we need between patients and GPs, even though, theoretically, we have universal registration with GPs, which should be the perfect concept for developing the system. GPs will not do it unless there is money in it, and if we could include proper screening with risk calculators with GPs in the QOF points, we could solve the problem.

Mental Health Bill [HL]

Baroness Murphy Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th January 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Murphy]

96: Clause 34, page 47, line 13, leave out subsection (2)
Member’s explanatory statement
The purpose of the amendment is to query the necessity of expanding on “appropriate medical treatment”.

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

My Lords, noble Lords will be pleased to know that this is a very small, probing amendment, on a matter that was brought to my notice by some forensic psychiatrists. One of their responsibilities is to train young psychiatrists in the use of the Mental Health Act as it relates to patients who have been engaged in criminal proceedings. In this group of amendments, we are talking about transfers between hospitals and prisons and the use of Sections 47 and 48.

Amendment 96 concerns Section 47 removals from prisons to hospitals. The original Act was very straightforward, stating that

“the said person is suffering from mental disorder; and that the mental disorder from which that person is suffering is of a nature or degree which makes it appropriate for him to be detained in a hospital for medical treatment; and that appropriate medical treatment is available for him”.

The new version expands the clause by stating that

“treatment can be given for the relevant disorder from which the person is suffering”.

This is repeated in Clause 34(3).

My immediate thought on reading this was, “What else can an appropriate treatment be except one for the relevant disorder from which the patient is suffering?” Also, why is it necessary to expand this clause at all, on the basis that we should be as straightforward as we possibly can, particularly with people who are using this on a day-to-day basis? If the patient is suffering from another disorder, or the patient is not suffering, how could the treatment possibly be “appropriate”?

I understand from the Explanatory Notes, and from what Ben Coffman, special adviser to the Minister, told me about what the Bill team is trying to achieve, that Sections 47 and 48 are generally interpreted to mean that hospital managers are not formally required to provide evidence that a hospital place is available. If an order is made, the hospital specified is under a duty to admit the patient.

However, there was an immigration case, R (ASK) v SSHD, in which the Court of Appeal ruled that, because specialised provision is required for restricted patients, a physical hospital place must be identified for the detention criteria to be met. This did not reflect the government position at the time, which was that “available treatment” should be interpreted to be the same for all Part II and Part III patients. Therefore, the Government are now changing the wording of this to ensure that a physical hospital bed does not need to be identified. This is how “available” treatment is currently interpreted for the detention criteria across the rest of the Act.

With these few words, therefore, Clause 34 aims to correct the divergence in the detention criteria, as opposed to creating one. Well, I must say that I still do not understand why these few words change the detention criteria. They just add more complexity to the wording. I do not understand why they have the effect that the Explanatory Note says they do. I am asking for greater guidance, because I just do not get it. I wrote to my colleagues saying, “This is the answer I’ve got, so maybe this doesn’t need to be asked”. I got a single line back, saying “What?” They simply did not understand the response. So I am asking again.

Those are all my questions on Sections 47 and 48, relating to Clause 34. There are other amendments in this group to which I will say something, in the interests of not having to bob up again. The noble Lord, Lord Stevens, has two important amendments on the reciprocal nature of transfers between prison and hospital. If what is good for the goose is good for the gander, and if we are going to make it a lot easier to transfer people from prison to hospital, which I very much hope we will, we must be able to transfer people back in the other direction.

I know that this was an issue very close to the heard of the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, who is not able to be in her place today. She has run wards where that very frustrating situation arises where you have somebody desperate to come into the ward from a prison who has been identified by the consultant, but no space can be made available because somebody is blocking that place. I will therefore be giving my support to the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, on those amendments. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

My Lords, it is my great pleasure to respond to the Minister. I will keep it brief. I have been using this Act for 40 years since 1983, and I assure the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, that this is the only clause which is interpreted, before the amendment, as somebody can apply for transfer and you have to find a bed. It is only the very new immigration Act that has led to this extraordinary transfer of information that has enabled somebody to put in these extra words, but they do not relate in any way to the immigration Act on which the amendment is based; in other words, it seems to me that we should just stick with what we have. I was trying to say that in as easy a way as I possibly could. It just seems to me that it is making it complex at a time when we need to be simple. There is a lot to learn in this Bill. There is a lot to be done. Nevertheless, if the Minister would like to give me a “teach-in”, I shall be delighted. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 96 withdrawn.

Mental Health Bill [HL]

Baroness Murphy Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 54A and 54B in my name, which are on a very narrow part of the treatment plan for individuals. Before I do that, let me say that I support the amendments in this group, particularly the general thrust of what been said; that is, that the automatic medical model must no longer be the default position and a much more social model must be added on to the medical model so that they complement each other.

Having said that, I listened very carefully to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, but found it very difficult to understand what was required. She argued against the use of medication but then argued against quite a lot of the non-medicated issues. Her intervention was a bit confusing in terms of understanding what the importance was.

My amendments are predominantly about Clause 18, which is about the use of ECT. The clause allows for the emergency use of ECT based on a second medical opinion. The element I wish to speak to is the very wide Henry VIII power that the Government wish to give themselves in regulations to do away with the second medical opinion in an emergency. The Bill says:

“The appropriate national authority may by regulations amend this Act to provide for circumstances in which functions of a second opinion appointed doctor in relation to treatment falling within section 62ZA(1) may or must be carried out instead by the approved clinician in charge of the treatment in question”.


New Section 62ZB(3) then says:

“Regulations under this section may make … (a) provision subject to specified exceptions; (b) different provision for different cases; (c) transitional, consequential, incidental or supplemental provision”.


That is quite a wide Henry VIII power.

To prove that I really am Billy No-Mates and do not get out often on a cold night, I read the wonderful 10th report of this Session from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which makes exactly the same points but in more eloquent language. This is a very wide Henry VIII power, and the committee does not really understand why the Government are seeking—even though it is through the affirmative procedure—such wide powers in such broad language.

The committee said that it would expect the power to be drafted with significant limitations and a framework for when it could be used. My amendment seeks to do exactly that. It would not prevent the clinician in change from using ECT in an emergency case without referring to a second practitioner in certain circumstances, but the regulations would be within a framework laid out in Amendment 54B, that

“the treatment is immediately necessary to save the patient’s life … obtaining a second opinion would cause a delay that places the patient at a significant and imminent risk of death or serious physical harm, and … the treatment is reversible”.

The regulations would have to be written so that

“Any amendment made under subsection (1) must specify the exceptional nature of the circumstances in which the second opinion may be dispensed with”.


A report to Parliament on subsection (1) dispensations would also have to be made.

I believe, from reading the wise words of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in its report, that it is important that the regulations have a framework, so that the Minister still has flexibility but is constrained by what is in the Bill. That is why I have spoken to this amendment.

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

My Lords, I feel I must poke my nose in on these of amendments, even though I do not have an amendment. I support the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and his various amendments. I particularly like the amendment that would require children and their families to be asked the month after how it all went.

We are hearing described the appalling nature of many mental health services. It is not just children’s services. Although they may be a very good example, as many of them are not fit for purpose, we would get the same complaints and the same appalling state of affairs if we went around other mental health services across the country. It is heartbreaking. I truly believe that services have deteriorated since I practised in hospitals. People, including my former colleagues who are still practising, say that services are completely disorganised and not fit for purpose. We have known for 50 years that the social model of care was an appropriate model, and that you need psychological and social psychotherapeutic interventions, as well as any drugs that might be helpful. They are not going on because there is no availability anywhere.

We have known since at least the 1960s that patients with schizophrenia, for example, can benefit by being taught, one-to-one, about how to interact with people when they are recovering from an episode. That never happens, because we do not employ teachers in the NHS—we just do not do it. We do not employ the right sort of people and we do not have the right sort of facilities. When people are employed, there are so few of them that it is simply impossible to do what is necessary. I am not defending this, because there are some very good units—I am sure that there are some very good children’s and young people’s units—but they are not the norm anymore, and that is a very sad state of affairs.

Sadly, legislation through mental health Bills will not, unfortunately, solve the problem. What we are talking about is not only a fundamental change of culture and getting on with all the things that we know should be done; there needs to be investment and a totally different approach to mental health. All the things that we know should be done cannot be delivered by mental health legislation alone. I say that because we are trying to shove too much into the Bill and hoping for the best, but I do not think that it will work.

Later in the debate on these amendments, noble Lords moved away from talking about people who were very unwell and who need in-patient care to talking about this vast mass of people who are diagnosed with conditions where they cannot work. That is a whole new ball game. I agree with almost every word that the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, said, because there is no doubt that there is a massive overdiagnosis of things that are called “mental disorder”, when they are in fact distress and need a different sort of approach.

A young friend of mine—a gentleman who is now in his final years training as a maxillofacial surgeon—had a period of great distress because of family circumstances. He sat down on his own one evening and went to a website, “Diagnose yourself”. He rang me and said, “I’ve been diagnosed as having ADHD”. I cannot imagine anybody who is less likely to have ADHD than this young man, who is the most socially competent young man I know. This morning, my husband and I had a go on the website together—he did one test and I did another—and we both came up with the same result: “You probably have ADHD”. Well, maybe I am, folks, but I am not going to go on the Ritalin yet. There are a lot of websites that are utter rubbish and encourage people to pay money to see psychotherapists and other counsellors to see what the matter is with them, so that other people can put money in their pockets for doing not much.

That is the different end of the spectrum. When we are thinking about these things, we have to think about what the patient has. Is it something that can be diagnosed—heaven knows that colleagues here were very keen that we should have a diagnosis—or something at the other end of the spectrum? With the Mental Health Bill, we are talking about when you can detain people, take away their rights and say, “We are detaining you”, to treat them, and protect them from wrong treatment, bad doctoring and bad staff. That is what the Mental Health Act is for.

But I am afraid that it is not to do with any of this other stuff. We have to think through what really has to be in the Bill to protect the patients and the staff and what cannot go in there because it is not relevant to these issues.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I want to ask the noble Baroness a question. I agree that this Mental Health Bill should be confined to and is about the people who are very poorly and could be in danger of being detained—I understand that. However, all the time when we have these discussions, we are talking about a problem with a lack of resources. In the noble Baroness’s experience, is the broader mental health crisis taking away resources and focus, not in this Bill but in society, from giving that acute mental health care the resources that it needs—because it is being spread far too thinly across ever greater numbers?

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

Yes, I would say that indeed it was. That year when they gave an extra £400,000 to spreading psychotherapy around was the same time when we were having incredible crises in acute hospital services, and I thought that it was not justified. But the mental health crisis that we have in this country is the same one that they were complaining about in 1860, 1870 and 1880; every generation believes that it is worse off than the generation before, but there is not much evidence that it is.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, having just heard the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, I shall be extremely cautious about what I look at on the internet. I want to say just two or three words. I have experience from my own family and from my friends of two sets of drugs—anti-depressants and Ritalin—and they really should be used a great deal more cautiously.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, now is not the time to have the extensive debate that the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, has opened up. I said right at the outset that we are talking about legislation that comes into play when a person is going to be detained because they are very ill and at risk of harming themselves or somebody else. But I would say to the noble Baroness that the Wessely review looked at this issue at considerable length, and I was among the Peers who listened to Sir Simon Wessely when he came to present his findings. One thing that has stuck with me is the person who gave evidence to his review who said: “I was very ill. I had to have treatment. Why did it have to feel so awful?”—I am using parliamentary language there. Does the noble Baroness accept that mental health legislation debates such as this might be limited, but they do an important thing in sometimes challenging the prevailing orthodoxy among the professions, and they are an occasion where the experience of patients, which have built up over many years, gets a chance to change practice? That is why we should look at all the amendments in this group, and in particular those of the noble Earl, Lord Howe.

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

I agree with everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, has said. She is absolutely right that professions should be challenged, and that is partly what legislation can do, particularly in debates such as this. But we are losing the very important amendments from the noble Earl, Lord Howe, about young people and what we can do to improve circumstances through the Bill, and I want not to lose them, because they are very important.

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

Very briefly on the question that the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, raised, the notion of supply-induced demand is a well-known phenomenon across health services. However, I have to say to her that I think that we are a long way off that being the problem that is principally confronting children and young people’s mental health services. We have a massive gap between the need for effective therapies for children and young people and their availability.

When the process of trying to expand children and young people’s mental health services kicked off several years ago, the goal was that we would get to a situation where one in three children and young people with a diagnosable mental health condition would get some form of specialist mental health support. That number has now been exceeded. I was just looking at the stats published last week and, although I do not see the most up-to-date number for it, I would be surprised if more than one in two are currently getting specialist mental health support for a diagnosable mental health disorder, not just distress. So, we are a long way off confronting this problem of supply-induced demand, whatever broader cultural or therapeutic labelling questions that she rightly points to may be in the ether. Fundamentally, we are going to need more services to benefit the children and young people who need them, not pretend that this is somehow all vapourware, imaginary or a cultural deformity, unlike our predecessors in the Victorian era.

Mental Health Bill [HL]

Baroness Murphy Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 20th January 2025 Lords Chamber

The CQC links that to rising detentions under the Act, because they can lead to a “greater likelihood” of people displaying behaviours that meet the threshold for detention under the Act. That is despite the fact that they may not have any form of mental disorder. Can the Minister say whether mental illness arising from drug misuse is likely to play any part in the decisions that the Secretary of State will make around what might constitute a specified risk factor that increases the risk of detention under Part II? I beg to move.

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

My Lords, as the noble Earl, Lord Howe, has mentioned, we will be talking about risk factors in the next group but one, and I will not go into the statistics and predictions at this point.

As has been pointed out, Clause 4 implies that specific risk factors for detention under Part II are readily identifiable and assessed, but as we will see, predicting episodes of violent behaviour or self-harm is peculiarly difficult to do. The clause suggests that it is not clinicians who will be doing these risk assessments but that the Secretary of State will somehow have some expertise from ICBs in how to do this. Apart from the rather obvious wisdom that the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour, I am not sure how these regulations can be drawn up.

I am anxious about the common prejudices around, for example, black patients of African Caribbean descent living in London, who have a higher risk of being detained under Part II than white patients, or Asians of an Indian subcontinent background. Who will draw up this list to say which of these items is going to lead to the risk of detention under Part II?

There have always been opportunities for the Secretary of State to intervene in the detention of patients under Part III of the Act, and some Secretaries of State have been more risk averse than others. I suspect that under this clause we will find some Secretaries of State taking a more hard-line view about who should and should not be detained. That gives cause for enormous anxiety, so I would like to know how the Government intend to devise these regulations to document specific risk factors.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, this is an important set of amendments, and, as the noble Earl, Lord Howe, said, they are central to decisions about whether to detain people under the Act.

I agree that the definition of “serious harm” is important, and it would be helpful to hear from the Minister what the Government are thinking there, how it will be applied, and how any thresholds will be established.

I endorse what the noble Earl had to say about children and young people, what a huge decision it is to detain someone under 18 in hospital against their will, and how hard we need to work to avoid that, whenever that is safe for themselves and other people.

Finally, and very much linked to that, I strongly support Amendment 139 on the availability of community-based services, which we have already talked about and which we will turn to in subsequent groupings. It is a very good amendment, particularly the provision which states:

“The Secretary of State must publish a report to assess whether there should be more community-based services for community patients in order to prevent”—


I see this as a key preventive measure—

“detention under the Mental Health Act 1983”.

My one point is that the amendment talks about publishing that within two years of the day on which this Act is passed. I personally think that in an ideal world we might see a report a bit earlier than that. However, as I say, Amendment 139 certainly has my full support.

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[Lord Beamish (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 33 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Scriven. If this Bill is a success, we shall, I hope, see fewer people with autism and learning difficulties detained under the Mental Health Act. However, the noble Lord’s amendment goes to the heart of the problem of resources. The current system is broken. It is a market system, which ends up with a lot of people finding themselves detained in facilities far from home, and getting out of that system can be very difficult.

The collection of data will be important: first, to find out how many people are being detained. Having spent 23 years in the other place and having been a passionate advocate for mental health, I always found that data is one thing that is never really kept. It is kept between the Department of Health and various other healthcare providers. Getting that visibility for the numbers we are talking about will be very important.

We need to be honest that, in the entire mental health debate, people with autism and learning disabilities have been overlooked. To get this right, having proper community-based facilities will be very important, but it will be expensive. The market model we have at the moment means that lots of private companies provide care at very high cost, and commissioners tend to have to commission only from certain providers. This leads to a shortage of supply and prices going up. The Minister needs to spell this out.

I understand what the noble Lord said in moving the amendment, but it is important to have visibility of not only the numbers but where the community facilities are going to be. New Clause 125FA(2)(b) in the amendment says the Secretary of State should ensure that community services are available to meet demand after 28 days. If you speak to any commissioner at the moment, they will tell you that that is completely unrealistic. I accept that it was put in the amendment for debate, but that is an aim we should be trying to get to in supporting people in the community. I have seen sad cases of people being stuck in the system. With the best will in the world, and I think there is cross-party support for this, we should not have people with learning disabilities and autism stuck in the system for as long as they are, with no way of getting out. I accept that the Bill aims to give a voice to those individuals, but without the resources to match, they will still go round the merry-go-round of different funders.

Another important issue that we need to highlight is the lack of support staff in the community for dealing with people with learning difficulties and autism. That is not seen as a priority at college. We need to put more emphasis on making it an attractive career and on the fact that it is vitally needed and will make a real difference to the individuals concerned. Training is important, but so is getting people into the service in the first place. I accept that the noble Lord is not going to press the amendment, but it goes to the heart of most of the matters in the Bill. We are deluding ourselves if we think the good and well-intentioned things in the Bill will be delivered without the resources to do so; they will not. The one without the other will lead to people still being detained when, in a modern society like ours, they really should not be.

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

My Lords, I give my strong support to the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, asking for a road map, which I think is the political phrase we use now, to get to where we want to be. I remind him that, back when the then Government came in in 1987, we had a documented timetable for closing the learning disabilities hospitals but that never happened; it went too slowly. So, we have left people stranded in various independent sector and NHS facilities, partly, to be honest, because the Department of Health took its eye off the ball as to what was happening to people in long-stay care and just stopped looking. So I agree that we need some kind of timetable; otherwise, the Bill becomes simple aspirations, as we have already said.

Unfortunately, it is not just autism and learning disabilities that require special training. In a lot of areas of mental disorder, people get inadequate training in subspecialties when they are studying the general psychiatric stuff. Psychiatric nurses do not get enough, either. I agree that there are issues here that require a special target, but at the moment they do not get it, so I support that as well.

On the experience of the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, of course it is true that there are an awful lot of bad psychiatrists around. There are bad physicians and bad surgeons—not the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, before he punches me on the chin. We should not say “bad”; I would say “not the best”. A friend of mine was visited by a community psychiatrist in old age psychiatry about a month ago. I asked his partner how it went, and he said, “Well, he was in and out in 15 minutes. He’d got 10 assessments he was going to do in people’s homes around south Norfolk in that time”. That was a totally inadequate amount of time to get a history from relatives, to get an understanding of what was going on in the home situation and to understand the problems this person was experiencing. I was shocked, but I was told not to be because it happens all the time that there is an inadequate length of time for people’s assessment.

It is hardly surprising that diagnoses are wrong and that people end up with the wrong prescriptions. It is deeply regrettable, but this will happen for as long as community services are underresourced. As we have heard from all around the Chamber, you can put as much in place as you like, but if it is underfunded, has the wrong facilities or is too far away from where people live, it just will not happen. We need a road map, and we need to know when these facilities will be made available, because the rest of it cannot happen until they are.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 152. We have already had a rich debate, concentrated on certain areas. This amendment deals with a somewhat different area, which is why I wanted to include it at the end. We have talked quite a bit about training and research and the link between the two. The noble Lord, Lord Scriven, said in introducing this group that it was all about autism and learning difficulties, but this amendment also covers mental health, for the interests of clarity.

This is a probing amendment, but there is an argument for doing what it calls for, which is having a report to Parliament, two years after the Bill is passed and then every three years thereafter, about the provision for and progress in research, and the transfer of research findings, in mental health and autism and learning difficulties. This would enable Parliament to keep a check on how much resource is being put into this area and, crucially, how much knowledge is transferred into practice. It would also be a really useful tool for informing Parliament about what is an extremely fast-changing area.

It is worth noting that mental health and disabilities are areas in which research is not just redefining our understanding but often entirely demolishing old models and forcing a restart from the basics. We are also seeing a change in approach, in which I am very pleased to say that there is an increased focus on ensuring that experts by experience can guide and have input into research directions in a way that certainly was not true in the 20th century.

I note, for example, an interesting study from the University of Stirling last year, which spoke to people in Scotland—though I have no doubt this applies more broadly. It looked at how research in autism currently tends to be directed towards biological studies and a search for treatments and cures, but autistic people said that they would prefer a focus on a good quality of life, and that they should have a real say in the research directions. They were concerned that continuing even now are ableism, objectification, and other othering approaches in research directions. I spoke on the previous day in Committee about the failure to apply the social model of disability to learning difficulties and autism. That is very much the case. I hope that that will change, which would change what we should be researching and how we should be training people.

Moving to perhaps more comfortable ground for many people, I note that there is a replication crisis across many areas of research. That is particularly true in the mental health space, where, unsurprisingly, there has been a recent dawning that conducting a great deal of research on US college students does not necessarily produce findings that can be replicated all around the world in all sorts of different research conditions. For example, with Alzheimer’s disease, are amyloid plaques a cause, a symptom or simply correlated? I have no idea, and I doubt that anyone can say, with their hand on their heart, that they know either. This an area in which the continuous failure of medical trials has shown our lack of knowledge.

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Moved by

[Baroness Murphy]

37A: Clause 5, page 11, leave out lines 14 to 16 and insert—
(b) there is a risk of serious harm to the health or safety of the patient or of another person;”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment and others in the name of Baroness Murphy remove from the criteria any mention of “likelihood” or “may be caused” and replace them with wording that allows a clinician to evaluate risk in the individual case and give evidence more straightforwardly and comprehensively without making predictions for individuals about risk.

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

My Lords, in this group, we return to the issue of serious harm and risk. Clause 5, on the grounds for detention, implies that the risk factors for detention under Part 2 are identifiable and that risks are readily assessed. A number of clauses in the Bill are all about the same thing, which is why there are so many amendments in this group. They imply, again, that risks are quantifiable and predictable—if only.

Academic research has often stressed how difficult it is to predict episodes of violent behaviour in individuals, because they are rare. Risk assessments given as likelihoods are of limited use when the base rate for violence in a population, particularly serious violence, is low. The same is true, by the way, for suicide and suicidal thoughts.

It has been calculated, using the average of all the current tests and rating scales that have been carefully assessed in research studies, that if 5% of the patient population were in a high-risk category, the tests would correctly identify eight in 100 people who would go on to commit acts of violence, but misidentify as violent another 92 people. In fact, less than 1% of community patients will commit serious violence over the period of a year, which means the tests would correctly identify only three patients out of 100.

Homicides occur at a rate of one in 10,000 patients suffering from a psychosis per annum, which makes prediction more or less impossible. A number of factors are statistically associated with later violence at a group level. Even the most effective predictive combinations of variables constructed by statisticians perform poorly, except at group level. So making statements about individual risk based on the use of these tools is complex, and some would say unsafe and unethical.

Structured risk-assessment systems can be useful in routine clinical practice; indeed, most people use them in day-to-day team thinking about what these risks are. When employed by staff properly trained in their use, they are useful pointers. They perform better than unaided clinical judgment in predicting future violence, but again, at a group level. On an individual level, these checklists need to be part of a detailed understanding of a patient’s mental state, life circumstances and thinking, which is a major contributor to the prevention of harm. This is best achieved, as always, by well-trained professionals operating in a well-resourced environment where staff know well the patient’s history, response to treatment and life circumstances.

The wording of the Bill encourages pseudo exact probabilities and predictions of individual behaviour, which are not possible. This exerts pressure on psychiatrists, particularly at tribunals, to make predictions that may be seriously wrong. Unreasonable expectations of what can be predicted lead to defensive practice—to detaining people where it is not justified by the unreliable evidence. There are several places in the Bill where the impression is given that risks are reliable and predictable, but it is not so. As I say, the same problem arises with suicide and suicidal behaviours.

I ask the Government to look at whether the wording of these clauses is reasonable, given the evidence, and to substitute these certainties with something more flexible, indicating that a more rounded, holistic and comprehensive assessment is necessary. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 86 and 67, in my name, in this group. I put them in that order as Amendment 86 more naturally follows on from—

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Apologies.

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

I am awfully sorry, but I should have mentioned that I also have almost all the other amendments in this group. They cover the same question—it is just about the wording of these two phrases. Amendment 45, along with one other, is not mine, but most of the amendments are covered by those brief words.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I think that I am speaking in the right group. Amendments 45 and 48 are in my name, and although they are in this group, they are of a rather different nature. They are about the framework and definition of “appropriate medical treatment”.

I will briefly outline the overall context and why I thought it important to bring these two amendments forward. I am particularly concerned that many in-patients in mental health hospitals, particularly autistic people and people with a learning difficulty, continue to face detention in hospital settings which can provide little or no therapeutic benefit. The environment of these hospital settings can be incredibly overstimulating and distressing. We continue to hear stories of restrictive practices, including physical, mechanical and even chemical constraint, as well as the use of solitary confinement.

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With that response, I hope that the noble Baronesses will not press their amendments.

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

I thank the Minister for her response. I have to say that psychiatrists remain worried about this and the possibility that they will be expected to make decisions on risks which they are simply not capable of doing. But I would not want there to be a feeling around that we want to discourage people from taking action much earlier than they sometimes currently do, because, in my view, they often leave it too late before they admit somebody—we have seen a number of such cases recently. I reserve the right, perhaps, to come back with some alternative ideas, but I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 37A withdrawn.

Mental Health Bill [HL]

Baroness Murphy Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 20th January 2025 Lords Chamber

This amendment is flagging up the fact that we have a treatment regime which is based in acute hospitals and the connection to community services is one that exists perhaps on paper rather than in reality. My amendment is an attempt to begin to patch this up to some extent, so that instead of becoming a one-off episode, which it often can be, it is part of an ongoing pathway of treatment. I beg to move.

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

I will speak to Amendment 100 in this group, and there are four or five consequential amendments which I have added. Noble Lords will therefore be pleased to know that the group is a lot smaller than it looks.

The purpose of this amendment is, on the face of it, to remove informal patients from qualifying for help from independent mental health advocates, on the basis that, given the resources required, to expand the services for detained patients to all in-patients is impractical, as in the impact assessment done by the Government. There will be some who assume from this amendment that I do not like IMHAs, but nothing could be further from the truth.

On the face of it, one cannot criticise what appears to be an extension of services and automatic referral to IMHA services, for both detained and informal patients. Local authorities, under direction from Schedule 3, will be obliged to provide the service and will need to extend it significantly. There are currently 50,000 new detained patients eligible for the service every year, but this would double to 100,000 people when informal patients are included. The impact assessment for cost to local authorities calculated that these new services will be an extra £571 million over a 20-year period—that is over half a billion pounds, or £81 million or so every year.

One might assume, therefore, that some serious evaluative research had demonstrated what a boon advocates are, as we all hope so, and that patients valued them and that they made a big difference to their outcomes. However, there is just one small UK study, by Karen Newbigging and her colleagues, which, on quality of services, suggested that where they were accessible— and they were not really very accessible in all the places studied—patients found the process was a positive experience, although they had no impact on outcomes of care and treatment. The advocates concentrated on explaining people’s rights but did not advocate more creatively to change decisions on care, which the authors rightly suggested could be an important role.

It is generally thought that, where IMHAs are from the same ethnic community as the patient, this is one step that could be taken to make the service more friendly for black and other ethnic-minority patients. There is better evidence in the States, where it has been demonstrated that independent advocates are central to the success of advance choice documents; patients do not create advance choice documents without a facilitator. A study in North Carolina showed that providing a facilitator in the form of an independent advocate increased the number of people making a psychiatric advance directive from 3% to 60%. Since we hope that these will be increasingly helpful to patients, I can understand why we think it is very important that detained patients should have them.

However, I would suggest that it is a bit of a leap to go for a massive expansion without much more evidence on how best to use these trained advocates and on who benefits the most. In September 2023, there were 28,600 vacancies—19% of the total workforce—in mental health services, including 1,700 medical and 13,300 nursing vacancies. In spite of training more staff, there is ample evidence that the current challenges posed by in-patient environments mean that many services rely on agency and bank staff simply to keep the ward open. The King’s Fund survey of approved mental health professionals found that, to meet the requirements of a 24-hour service, there would need to be a 30% increase in the number of full-time equivalent staff, in addition to accounting for the vacancy rates of over 11%.

Yet here we are proposing that the local authority should spend a huge amount of money on independent mental health advocates, when it does not have a satisfactory number of psychiatric social workers and cannot fulfil its obligations to provide decent social care for older people or protect vulnerable children from harm. If any noble Lords were reviewing their own local authority spending, do we seriously think that expanding IMHA services to informal patients would be high on the agenda? I think probably not, although I believe they will be helpful, especially for patients matched to someone of the same ethnic background. I would like to see more consistent evidence about how best to recruit and train them and develop their skills because it is crucial, if we do fund them, that we get the basics right, so that when they do get appointed, they are doing the right things for the right people. Otherwise, we should be extremely cautious in expanding these services.

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[Lord Scriven (LD)]

I just wonder where this £81 million per annum comes from. I think that there is a total cost of £99 million over the period, but I am not sure where the £81 million comes from.

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

It is taken directly from the Government’s impact assessment on the Bill to local authorities, with these particular resources for IMHAs.

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[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for that intervention, because this is something that we could learn from here. Given the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, made at the beginning, would taking that lesson from the black community in North Carolina work with black communities up and down the country here? I hope it is something that the Government could look into, or respond to, as one of the ways, once we have the relevant data, to reduce the rate of detention and CTOs for people from the black community.

I end by asking the Minister that question: is she aware of whether her department has looked at—was it North Carolina or South Carolina?

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

North Carolina.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

I have had that confirmed.

I will first address Amendment 43A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker. Patients on CTOs already have the right to independent mental health advocate services. Community treatment order patients will be informed of their right to an independent mental health advocate when they are under Section 3, as part of the opt-out approach for all detained patients, as a patient cannot be placed on a CTO without having been detained first in hospital. They will be aware of this right. In addition, the revised code of practice provides opportunities for further guidance on how to improve the uptake of services for CTO patients, and we will consult on this.

Amendment 102, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, was also spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge. We appreciate that advocacy plays a vital role in supporting choice and the person as an individual, and that under-18s are a vulnerable group who would benefit from independent mental health advocate representation. I am pleased to say that the Bill already extends the right to an independent mental health advocate to informal patients, and this includes children and young people. It places a new duty on hospital managers to inform them of this right. As we seek to revise the code of practice, we plan to provide further clarity on how to meet the needs of children and young people, including through this increased access to advocacy, so the point is well made.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, for bringing Amendments 100, 103, 104, 108, 109, 110 and 111 before the Committee today, which were also spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Kamall. Currently, independent mental health advocacy support is available only to detained patients. We want to extend this support to all in-patients, as we believe it is important for all patients to understand their rights and legal status, not just those who are detained under the Mental Health Act. This is in line with the approach already taken in Wales, where both detained and informal patients are eligible.

The noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, and the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, raised points about expanding advocacy and the use of resources. The figures suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, overstate the costs that are set out in the impact assessment. Table 7 in the impact assessment shows that the estimated annual cost of informal advocacy would be between £6 million and £7 million a year. I hope that clarifies things for noble Lords.

[Baroness Murphy (CB)]

I apologise. Obviously, I was looking at another figure from a different bit of the impact assessment.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

I think the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, added up all the years and got to the final cost, and then described it as an annual cost. I think it was a genuine mistake.