Ministers leave door open to continuing ‘absolute scandal’ of inappropriate Mental Health Act detention

A disabled MP has failed to persuade ministers to show exactly what progress they are making towards ensuring there are enough community services to halt the “scandal” of disabled people being inappropriately detained under the Mental Health Act.

Current mental health laws mean it is possible for an autistic person or someone with a learning difficulty to be detained under the act without any associated mental ill-health.

Labour MP Jen Craft told fellow MPs on Tuesday that this was “an absolute scandal” and “something from a previous age that should be a source of moral shame to everyone in our community”.

Although she said the government’s mental health bill seeks to address this by “removing autism or a learning disability, in and of themselves, as criteria for detention under the Mental Health Act”, a government impact assessment admitted that this measure “will only be switched on when systems are able to demonstrate sufficient level of community support”.

She said: “We know that this government and the Department of Health and Social Care have a number of competing priorities to deliver on, and the concern for people who fall into this bracket under the legislation is that their concerns just will not be addressed and that this absolute scandal will continue in perpetuity.

“People who have a learning disability or autism will be detained because our community services just are not up to snuff; we have so categorically failed them that the only thing we can think to do is to lock them away from society.”

She was hoping to secure the government’s support for her proposal to end the scandal, by adding a new clause to the bill as it passed one of its final stages in parliament.

Her clause would have ensured the government had to co-produce a “road map” that would describe what autistic people and people with learning difficulties need “to support them to lead independent dignified lives in the community”, with an annual report describing “how we are getting community services to a sufficient place so that these much-needed clauses in the bill can be switched on”.

But care minister Stephen Kinnock said the government would not support her new clause.

He told MPs: “I acknowledge the importance of having a clear plan to resource community provision for people with a learning disability and autistic people to implement these reforms.

“We have committed ourselves to an annual written ministerial statement on implementation of the bill post royal assent.”

He promised to “work with stakeholders, including people with lived experience, to shape our road map” for implementing the changes Craft referred to.

He said: “The written ministerial statements will give updates on progress, as well as setting out future plans.”

But he added: “It is not possible at this stage for us to commit ourselves to the specifics of implementation and community support, which depend on the final legislation passed, future spending reviews, and engagement with stakeholders to get implementation planning right.”

The bill – supported this week by both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats – now passes to the Lords to vote on changes that have been made by MPs since peers passed the mental health bill earlier this year.

Based on draft legislation drawn up by the last Conservative government, the bill has passed almost unnoticed through the Lords and the Commons, despite significant concerns raised by disabled campaigners.

The UN committee on the rights of persons with disabilities raised serious concerns in July that the bill was breaching the international disability rights convention.

Disabled activists believe it falls far short of the fundamental reforms needed to ensure full human rights for disabled people, and that it will not stop them being subjected to forcible detention and degrading treatment.

There have also been protests by autistic people and people with learning difficulties, who believe the bill will not do enough to keep them out of mental health hospitals, or protect them from badly-run hospital services that have led to cruelty, abuse, and even deaths.

The user-led, rights-based organisation Liberation, which is run by people with mental health diagnoses, has led criticism of the bill for ignoring, dismissing and misrepresenting calls for “full human rights” for people experiencing acute mental distress or trauma, and autistic people and those with learning difficulties.

Dorothy Gould, founder of Liberation, said the passing of the bill by MPs was a “day of shame for all political parties”.

She said: “Not one of them has seized the opportunity to put forward legislation which finally gives disabled people the same human rights as other UK citizens.

“Instead, they have done the opposite.

“During parliamentary debates, too, there has not been any senior politician, nor any MP who has brought up, let alone supported, the serious human rights concerns which Liberation has raised on behalf of people experiencing mental distress and trauma.

“Nor has even one of them addressed the weak evidence base which lies at the heart of the bill’s continuing authorisation of coercion against us.

“Politicians’ entrenched emphasis on just ‘improving’ a fundamentally discriminatory law, the Mental Health Act 1983, instead of bringing in radical change, is sheer discrimination.

“It can only result in continuing trauma for people who are already in acute distress.

“It is utterly shameful and utterly devastating.”

Picture: (From left to right) Jen Craft and Stephen Kinnock

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