R adical changes must be made to the draft Mental Health Bill if it is to deliver improvements in services, according to a charity.

The Welsh organisation, Hafal, has submitted new evidence to MPs scrutinising the bill demanding inclusion of basic rights for service users and carers.

Matthew Butcher, a Hafal trustee and former patient, said service users should “unquestionably have a right to early treatment to prevent their condition getting worse”.

He added: “It cannot be right that, in the 21st century, the state seeks to deal with mental illness through compulsion without any compensating rights to treatment.”

In evidence to the bill’s scrutiny committee last week, Phillip Sycamore, liaison judge for the Mental Health Review Tribunal, warned that staff shortages and administration problems would prevent the system coping with the proposed changes.

Problems affecting the current system included a database that produced inaccurate information, he said.

Under the draft bill, people who are detained for longer than 28 days would be entitled to a tribunal hearing in which their care and treatment plan would be assessed. Tribunals are only held where a problem is raised about a client’s care.