Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Bill

Debate between Kevin Foster and James Heappey

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 3rd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[James Heappey]

From discussions with local police constables and with the police commander, it seems that police officers have an instinct for when they are going into certain types of situation. One would imagine that if an officer were on the custody desk and heard that something required their intervention, they would obviously flick on their camera as a matter of drill while they were going down to the cell or wherever something was happening. That is assuming what we were just discussing—that it should be standard practice that somebody in those circumstances is always fully kitted out.

[Kevin Foster]

The requirement in the Bill is for officers to wear body-worn cameras when attending a mental health unit. My understanding is that that means that the unit has an issue and has called the police to attend. In many instances, custody suites have cameras, even though they may not be body-worn. The real solution is that response officers—those who are deployed ready to attend 999 calls—should have body-worn cameras. That would help not just in these instances, but in many other circumstances.

[James Heappey]

My hon. Friend is right, but whenever attending a call-out to a mental health unit—just as in attending any other event in the community—the police officer would have deployed in their patrol car wearing their full kit. They would already have been wearing the camera and would have switched on it on as they were entering the situation, if they thought that were necessary. The much more likely scenario, as perhaps would have been the case with James Herbert, is of people being called into a situation when they are not out on the street, but are just nearby and lending a hand. The fixed cameras in the building may be obscured by those doing the detention, so I also see real merit in body-worn cameras being used in those situations.

This is not just about how to ensure that acute, immediate interventions are handled properly. It is also about the additional training that might be offered to police and mental health workers to make sure that these situations do not arise in the first place. Training is key. That goes without saying for mental health workers, who, by vocation, understand this stuff very well indeed, but the police are much less confident in dealing with people with mental health issues than they should be.

Training for the police so that they can spot those signs and intervene appropriately with concern and care would be helpful and would prevent a large number of the instances that we are debating. There are techniques for reassuring people, for de-escalating, and for managing the anxiety that often manifests itself in people with mental illness. Equipping police with those skills would be very welcome indeed.