Mental Health Bill [Lords]

Peter Prinsley Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 19th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I wish I could correct my hon. Friend and say that I have already read in detail the feedback from the Joint Committee on Human Rights, but he is right: I have not yet had a chance to do that. However, I can assure him that I and my hon. Friend the Minister for Care will look at the Committee’s report. We would be very happy to meet members of the Committee to discuss in further detail their findings and recommendations.

We want to ensure that the Bill is as strong as it can be, given the length of time that has passed since the Mental Health Act was reformed. Indeed, the Mental Health Act is as old as I am. [Interruption.] Thank you for those interventions. I assure Members heaping compliments across the Chamber that it will not affect investment decisions in their constituencies, but I am none the less very grateful.

There is a serious point here: whereas attitudes to mental health have come on in leaps and bounds in the past four decades, the law has been frozen in time. As a result, the current legislation fails to give patients adequate dignity, voice and agency in their care, despite the fact that patients have consistently told us that being treated humanely, and making decisions about their own care, plays a vital role in their recovery.

When patients are detained and treated without any say over what is happening to them, it can have serious consequences for their ongoing health. To quote one of the many patients who bravely shared their experiences with Sir Simon Wessely’s independent review:

“Being sectioned was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. Sadly, as a result of being sectioned I developed PTSD”—

post-traumatic stress disorder—

“as the direct result of the way I was treated”.

Sir Simon’s review was published seven years ago. It shone a light on a group of people who had been hidden, ignored and forgotten. In the time that has passed since, the case for change has only snowballed. The Bill now takes forward Sir Simon’s recommendations.

The review stressed that legislation alone would not fix the system; culture and resources matter too. This was echoed in Lord Darzi’s investigation into the NHS, which uncovered some hard truths: a dramatic rise in the use of restrictive interventions on children; and 345,000 patients waiting more than a year for their first appointment with mental health services—more than the entire population of Leicester—of whom 109,000 were under the age of 18. This Bill does not solve every problem in our mental health services, but it marks a vital step in our plans to improve the quality of care, combat long-standing inequalities, and bring about a stronger focus on prevention and early intervention in mental health.

[Peter Prinsley (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that while we are seeing record levels of mental health problems in our young people, investment in community services for people with mental health problems must be a priority?

[Wes Streeting]

I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. As he has heard many times from this Dispatch Box, we want to see a shift in the centre of gravity in the NHS out of hospitals and into the community as one of the three key shifts that will underpin our 10-year plan for health, which we will be publishing in the not-too-distant future.

The Mental Health Act is designed to keep patients and the public safe, but it is clear to anyone who has seen how patients are treated that it does so in an outdated and blunt way that is unfit for the modern age. It is too easy for someone under the Act to lose all sense of agency, rights and respect. It is sometimes necessary to detain and treat patients, but there is no reason why patients experiencing serious mental illness should be denied the choice and agency they would rightly expect in physical care. Not only should the health service treat all its patients with dignity and respect anyway, but giving people a say over their own care means that their treatment is more likely to be successful. In the foreword to his independent review, Sir Simon Wessely said:

“I often heard from those who told me, looking back, that they realise that compulsory treatment was necessary, even life-saving, but then went on to say ‘why did it need to be given in the way it was?’”

Another patient in the 2018 review said:

“I felt a lot of things were done to me rather than with me”.

We need to get this right. We need to give these patients a voice.