I’m honoured to have been selected to sit on the Pre-Legislative Scrutiny Committee for the Mental Health Act (Reform) Bill.
The Mental Health Act, is the law that under certain circumstances empowers doctors to detain and treat people without consent who have mental illness. It’s used only when there is grave need, and our law in this area has evolved over time. In the UK we’ve been at the forefront of supporting and enhancing the rights and liberties of people when suffering from severe mental illness and consent to treatment, and this is the next step on that journey. There are many anachronisms in the current law, and in my life before being your MP I researched in this field and was on one of the panels of the Wessely review which fed into drafting these current proposals.
Over the coming months I’ll be working hard on this proposed legislation in the committee. It’s something we need to get right, and I’m very pleased there will be early cross-party scrutiny. We need to protect individual autonomy as much as is possible, while also ensuring the legal powers are there to safeguard and protect people when unwell and get them better.
You can find out more information and the work we are doing here: https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/605/joint-committee-on-the-d…;
See also my submission to the earlier consultation here.
