The government’s controversial
Mental Health Bill suffered a series of damaging defeats in the
House of Lords yesterday.
Peers made three fundamental amendments to the bill including a
requirement that compulsory mental health treatment have a
therapeutic benefit.
The House of Lords backed by 186 votes to 115 an amendment
ensuring that a person could only be detained if the treatment
would be “likely to alleviate or prevent a deterioration in his
condition”.
The bill originally proposed abolishing the need for compulsory
treatment to have a therapeutic benefit, principally so that people
with a dangerous antisocial personality disorder, sometimes
considered untreatable, could be detained.
But peers argued that without a therapeutic benefit test
clinicians would be asked to act unethically by providing
inappropriate treatment and acting as “turnkeys”.
The House of Lords also voted overwhelmingly to back an
amendment preventing people from being sectioned solely on the
basis of their substance misuse, sexual orientation or cultural
beliefs.
And a third amendment, requiring that renewal of a detention be
agreed by a medical practitioner and responsible clinician, was
agreed by 147 votes to 108. Crossbench peer and former social
worker Baroness Meacher suggested the bill as it stood could allow
“the rather ludicrous possibility” that an occupational therapist
or nurse could renew a detention against the advice of a
psychiatrist.
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