On 26th March 2014, the Home Affairs Select Committee announced a new Inquiry into Policing and Mental Health, under its chairman, the Rt Hon Keith VAZ, MP. This page simply collates all the various links to written and oral evidence and I will update it with the final written report once published. It could be completed by the end of 2014, but watch this space!
They invited written submissions from individuals and organisations and published this on the 14th May ahead of taking oral evidence in various sessions over the remainder of the year. I submitted written and oral evidence to the Inquiry.
You can click the date of the session listed below to see the oral evidence on video. Links to the written transcripts are also given because the video streaming technology used by HASC does not play on all devices, in particular I can’t get it to work on iPhones or iPads!
There have been five sessions so far —
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- 1st July – Matilda MacATTRAM, Director of Black Mental Health UK; Dominic WILLIAMSON, Chief Executive of Revolving Doors, Deborah COLES, Director of Inquest; Tony HERBERT and Barbara MONTGOMERY, parents of James HERBERT. (Written transcript of this session.)
- 2nd September – Inspector Michael BROWN, College of Policing. (Written transcript.)
- 21st October – Lord ADEBOWALE, Chair of the Independent Commission on Policing and Mental Health; Dr MJ TACCHI, Lead on Crisis Care, Royal College of Psychiatrists and David DAVIES, College of Paramedics. (Written transcript.)
- 28th October – Custody sergeants from Devon and Cornwall Police and Essex Police; Chief Constable Simon COLE, Leicestershire Police and Ch Supt Mark SMITH, British Transport Police. (Written transcript.)
- 11th November – Rt Hon Normal LAMB MP, Ministers of State for Care and Support; and Rt Hon Mike PENNING MP, Minister of State for Policing. (Written transcript.)
Winner of the President’s Medal,
the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Winner of the Mind Digital Media Award
All views expressed are my own – they do not represent the views of any organisation.
(c) Michael Brown, 2014
I try to keep this blog up to date, but inevitably over time, amendments to the law as well as court rulings and other findings from inquests and complaints processes mean it is difficult to ensure all the articles and pages remain current. Please ensure you check all legal issues in particular and take appropriate professional advice where necessary.
Government legislation website – www.legislation.gov.uk
Mental Health Cop 
Thanks for the basic details so far. I was pleased to see parents brought in to the equation. Previously the responders have been the “experts”. However the parents have been sidelined in the past by the “experts”. We are in this together and only that way we can make progress.
I was pleased to see you had put your piece forward from the police point of view but hope we can see the transcript at some time. It may enlighten a few of the carers that had suspicions but denied the details. Thanks again for these blogs and please keep up the great work even when you may feel you are beating your head against a brick wall.
So Sgt Kressinger believes that ‘if the police are called to someone in crisis then somebody (read health) have failed’. Oh dear god, that’s like saying any repeat offending is indicative of police failure. Why is he giving evidence to a select committee when frontline MH workers who may actually have expert knowledge are not. This bears no relation to real life and treats those ‘diagnosed’ by the police as poor incompetents who have no responsibility for their own decisions and also suggests mental distress can be prevented. Remember Sexy Talking therapies roughly aim for a ‘recovery’ rate of 40-50%. That’s a group of generally self motivated ppl with little history of risk behaviours or substance use. Compare that to the group called out by police! Please attempt to be make your comments bear some relation to reality or frontline MH staff will continue to pour scorn on them(privately) and generally feel there is no point engaging in this debate.