The Mental Health Bill has disappeared in to the Committee Stage of the House of Commons and you can see the extensive debates being had by a group of fifteen MPs who are tasked with scrutinising it. I was just having a quick catch up about it all, reading the composite document which is available to let you read the debates they’re having. After just three sessions of the Committee Stage, it is already 174 pages long!
Suggest you deploy CTRL-F to search for terms you’re interested in, as I did.
Now before I get in to the post, I wanted to how outline how depressing it has been to listen to the debate throughout the entire Parliamentary process – the Lords and the Commons. Various MPs with little and no knowledge holding forth on various aspects of how the law should be changed and in some cases, tabling to introduce things in to law which have never even been discussed with the professionals affected by the proposal. The best example of this is the “authorised person” debate about changes to s135/136 Mental Health Act 1983. Various members of the House of Lords, including former Prime Minister, Baroness May or Maidenhead, suggested giving powers to nurses, doctors, Approved Mental Health Professionals without even having the manners to ask those people whether they want legal powers to restraint and coerce their patients.
It was as surprised as anyone to see the Lords vote through that amendment and it’s survived in to the Committee Stage of the House of Commons where debate took place about it. Ultimately the Committee voted to remove that amendment and so it shouldn’t appear in the Act when it finally receives Royal Assent. But the House of Commons Committee Stage is helping us see very clearly the risks we all face with MPs voting on stuff they demonstrably don’t understand.
DANGEROUS IDEAS
This is an excerpt from Hansard for the Committee Stage. The context is a discussion about the “authorised person” amendment where MPs have been exchanging ideas about the various pros and cons. Then Dr Luke Evans MP says this (p62 of the PDF transcript, labelled as p112 in the top right corner of the PDF) –
“Many frontline NHS and social care professionals, including AMHPs, CrisisTeam members and community psychiatric nurses, already respond to acutely distressed patients in highly volatile environments. They lack the police powers, but not the clinical expertise. The amendments would bring clarity and lawful backing to the situations they already manage.
Take, for example, a mental health nurse in a community who arrives at a person’s home to conduct an urgent assessment. The individual is clearly experiencing psychosis, and is at immediate risk of self-harm. Under the current law, the nurse must call the police, delaying the care and potentially escalating the situation. Under the amendment, they could lawfully detain, provided they are authorised and trained.“
[Bold is my emphasis.]
No, Dr Evans – they couldn’t.
They just couldn’t and I was utterly flabergasted to see this put forward so very confidently. Also the question of whehter they could or couldn’t is a binary one: there’s a 50/50 chance of being correct about this by just flipping a coin, so you’d hope an MP, with voting rights over legislation and speaking on the matter in the country’s Parliament would take the two minutes involved to check whether what he was saying was right.
The “authorised person” amendment would have changed s136 MHA to allow for non-police professionals to take the decision to detain someone and remove them to a Place of Safety. So this hypothetical community mental health nurse might have such powers granted to them under the amended law, if and only if they undertook the relevant training to be “authorised”. But you’ll spot the problem, I’m sure:
Section 136 powers are simply not available in this situation now and would not be available in this situation in the future because s136 powers are not available in a private dwelling where someone lives – and that’s the situation Dr Evans puts forward.
PRIVATE HOMES
The police cannot currently turn up to that situation and detain someone under s136, so the nurse would not be able to do so in the future, even if this amendment went through. There is no proposal in this Bill to extend 136 powers to private homes, so we know Dr Evans wasn’t relying on a parallel amendment to create the conditions in which his comment above, stands true.
He just made something up without ensuring he was fully aware of the law as it stands – and we’ve seen that more than once in the debates and it’s depressing beyond words because – and I’m sorry really ram this home – this is pretty basic stuff and it all caries lives at risk. We need better.
Winner of the President’s Medal, the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
Winner of the Mind Digital Media Award
All opinions expressed are my own – they do not represent the views of any organisation.
(c) Michael Brown, 2025
I am not a police officer.
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 