Protest brings anger at failure to act on ‘homes not hospitals’ plea to government’s front door

The Labour government has “betrayed” autistic people and people with learning difficulties who have been abused and abandoned in mental health institutions, activists told a protest in front of the Houses of Parliament this week.

Disabled people with experience of detention spoke of their anger at the government’s failure to listen to their concerns about the new mental health bill.

Members of the Bring People Home from Psychiatric Hospital network – which organised the action – believe there are clear ways the bill can be improved.

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

As part of Tuesday’s protest (pictured), members of the network marched from Parliament Square to the Department of Health and Social Care’s nearby offices in Victoria Street to deliver a letter calling for a meeting with care minister Stephen Kinnock and mental health minister Baroness [Gillian] Merron (see separate story).

Although ministers have discussed the bill with many charities that are not run and controlled by disabled people – such as Mind, Mencap and the National Autistic Society – they have refused to meet the network and groups run by autistic people and people with learning difficulties.

Disabled people’s organisations including Free Our People Now, My Life My Choice, and All Wales People First spoke at Tuesday’s protest of their anger and frustration at the government’s plans and the refusal of ministers to address their concerns about the bill.

Four disabled people who have been detained in psychiatric hospitals spoke about their own experiences.

Ava, an autism trainer, speaker and activist from Brighton, said she was speaking on behalf of the many autistic people and people with learning difficulties who are being detained and mistreated by the care system in England.

She said her care package was cut from 24 hours-a-day and one-to-one support to just eight hours a day – without her input – after her support package broke down, leaving her in crisis and detained in a mental health hospital for a year.

She said: “During my time in hospital I was pinned down by mental health staff and injected with lorazepam and I also got sexually assaulted and I was also abused in many other ways.”

Because of the trauma she experienced, she now needs two-to-one support.

She told fellow protesters: “All of these restrictive practices, you wouldn’t treat a criminal like that, so why are the most vulnerable people being treated like that?”

She said: “Our Labour government had said they would support the vulnerable.

“They have betrayed us people… they have gone against everything they said they would.

“If our government are focusing on stopping people from going into hospitals, where are they going to put these people?

“There is no investment in community care or any pathways to support with living in a place they call home.”

She said her own experience showed that cutting people’s support could be “deeply damaging”.

Another autistic campaigner, Alexis Quinn, who has previously given evidence about mental health law reform in the House of Commons, described how she was detained as an inpatient in hospital for four years and felt “very, very alone”.

She said: “I was locked in solitary confinement for many days, weeks, and months, I was sat next to my excrement, I was fed on the floor, I was eating with my hands; this is not OK for anybody.”

She said she did not believe the government’s mental health bill would bring the change that was needed, but that “nobody is listening”.

She said: “I hear the government say they are going to improve services, mental health services, services for autistic people, services for learning disabilities, and I would ask: what services?

“What services are there, because I haven’t seen any?”

Sophie Hinksman, co-chair of All Wales People First, who was twice detained in a mental health hospital, said: “If the right support for my learning disability had been there from the start, I would not have been put into hospital, and I certainly wouldn’t have needed a second hospital stay.

“The problems started from a lack of understanding about learning disability.

“Nobody should have to call those places home.

“People with learning disability need the right support, close to their family and friends. We need homes not hospitals.”

Leslie Hunt, from the Oxfordshire self-advocacy organisation My Life My Choice, described how he had been locked away in a long-stay mental health hospital for 21 years.

He said he was hit, abused and restrained by staff, and locked up as a punishment, and did not trust any of the nurses.

He said: “I hated the system all the way through.

“Life locked away in a mental health unit is hard, but this does not need to happen.”

He is now living in the community, and he told the protest: “I can get up when I want to get up. I have good staff to support me.

“I can make my own decisions. I can be my own person.”

He told the protest: “I want the government to make sure people are no longer punished like this, and locked away.

“They must stop these places from treating people in horrible ways.

“The government needs to hear us rather than telling us to be quiet.

“We need to shout for our rights, until they listen.”

Simone Aspis, Free Our People Now campaign manager for Inclusion London, told fellow protesters on Tuesday: “The mental health bill will do nothing to move us out of hospital and into our own homes.

“Government ministers refuse to meet us and hear our voice.”

She said the government had showed “complete contempt” for organisations led by people with learning difficulties and autistic people, including those with lived experience of hospital detention.

Joe Powell, chief executive of All Wales People First, said that “people with a learning disability should not have to be incarcerated like prisoners because the services they are entitled to cannot be provided”.

He said the people who were being “incarcerated” in long-stay institutions were “really suffering and the places they are being put into are not just inappropriate, they are also very harmful for their wellbeing; the appropriate support they need is not being provided and many are suffering from great anxiety and distress”.

Samantha Johnson, from People First (Self-Advocacy), said: “It’s not fair that people like us are being locked up in hospitals for a long time.

“Many of us are kept in these places even when we don’t need to be there.

“That means we are taken away from our homes and loved ones, not allowed to live in our community, kept far from our families and friends.

“Being locked away like this takes away our freedom and rights.

“We are people, we matter, and we deserve to be treated like everyone else. It’s time to change the system.

“We want to be respected and treated like people. We want to be supported to live in homes and not locked up like animals.”

The user-led, rights-based organisation Liberation, which is run by people with mental health diagnoses, offered its full support for the campaign.

Dorothy Gould, Liberation’s founder, told the protest: “The government’s continuing support for involuntary detention in psychiatric hospitals and forced treatment is a complete disgrace. It’s disability discrimination.

“No one else is subjected to this sort of coercion.

“The government’s mental health bill was a golden opportunity to bring these forms of coercion to an end once and for all. But does it do that? No.

“Those of us given mental health diagnoses are told that the coercion has to continue to prevent us being a risk to ourselves and others.

“But there is no adequate research evidence that locking us up in hospital and forcibly treating us is even effective in preventing risk.

“The World Health Organisation itself has clearly stated that.”

She said that detention and forced treatment leaves many people with mental health diagnoses “intensely traumatised” and many lose their lives as a result, something which “so nearly” happened to her.

And she questioned why the mental health bill did not put “a complete end to detention and forced treatment” for those with mental health diagnoses, people with learning difficulties and autistic people.

She said: “Why is the government not putting its focus instead on the many community-based alternatives that are genuinely healing and genuinely effective?”

Other disabled people’s organisations, including The Alliance for Inclusive Education  and WinVisible, were also at this week’s action to offer their support to the campaign.

The government said this week that the number of inpatients with a learning disability or who were autistic and were subject to the Mental Health Act had fallen from 2,500 in March 2015 to 1,875 in February 2025.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) pointed to an NHS England target for 2025-26 that reliance on “mental health inpatient care for people with a learning disability and autistic people” should be cut by at least 10 per cent.

It also pointed to measures in the mental health bill that mean it will no longer be possible to detain someone with a learning disability or an autistic person if they do not also have a mental health condition that meets the act’s detention criteria, although these changes will only be implemented when there are strong community services in place.

A DHSC spokesperson said: “The number of autistic people and people with a learning disability in mental health hospitals is unacceptable, and there are still too many people being detained who could be supported in their communities.

“Through our proposed reforms to the Mental Health Act we want to help ensure people get the support they need in the community, improving care and keeping people out of hospitals.

“We are grateful for stakeholders’ contributions on the bill to date, including through the public consultation.

“The mental health bill is now undergoing parliamentary scrutiny and we will further engage with expert stakeholders, including people with lived experience, to inform how the bill will be implemented.”

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