Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Geraint Davies and Rebecca Pow

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Tuesday 18th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I speak as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on speech and language difficulties, so my primary concern is that people will have their freedom taken away simply because they cannot be understood rather than due to a mental capacity problem. The Minister will know that this is a big problem, with something like 10% of children entering school having a speech or language difficulty. Some 60% of young people in the criminal justice system have a speech or language difficulty, and yet speech and language therapy reduces reoffending from 39% to 26%, so it is a cost-effective intervention at that stage and would be even more cost-effective beforehand. Some 81% of children with emotional and behavioural disorders have unidentified language difficulties. Left untreated, 33% of children with speech and language difficulties develop a mental illness, and half of them commit crimes.

In other words, it is important to identify and provide support for people in such situations because, as we have already heard, it can cost £13,000 a week to keep someone incarcerated, but that may be happening simply because they have not been properly understood and have not received the support they needed. There is therefore a financial and moral onus on us to identify and provide therapy to reduce and reverse the development of mental health problems linked to speech and language difficulties.

The situation at the moment—it will be the same under the Bill—is that assessors often will not and do not recognise speech and language difficulties or cannot differentiate between them, and they often do not know how to support the client and communicate their needs.

[Rebecca Pow]

I support all the hon. Gentleman’s comments. He is making a strong case. Does he believe that staff training on communication ought to be included in the Bill, and that speech therapists should be included in the list of approved mental capacity professionals?

[Geraint Davies]

I was going to make precisely that point. The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists has said that the list of professionals should include such therapists and that all professionals carrying out assessments should have speech and language training so that they can identify the issues that they currently do not identify and provide clients with support. I ask the Minister to consider the Mental Capacity Act (Northern Ireland) 2016, which requires that support must be provided for communication.

When people are deprived of their liberty, that comes through their lack of capacity to consent, which is questionable if there has been no proper assessment of speech and language difficulties. The person may have a mental disorder, and the action that is taken must be necessary and proportionate. If they object, a review is carried out, but there is no requirement that a speech and language therapist should be involved in the review, which is another change that needs to be made.

The central point is that speech and language problems do not mean a problem with mental capacity, but they are commonly misread as such, which obviously costs the public sector a fortune and costs thousands of people their liberty. As has already been asked, I ask the Minister to look carefully at these issues over a longer timeframe, because we are in danger of rushing this through under the heat and smoke of Brexit, and everything else, and we risk denying the liberty of people whose liberty should not be denied and costing the public sector a fortune when that money would be better invested in preventive treatment such as early intervention for speech and language problems.