Mental Health Bill to proceed

When Theresa May was Prime Minster the Government announced reform of the Mental Health Act 1983 (“the Act”). A Bill (“the Bill”) was published in 2023 and has been progressing through the various pre-legislative stages.

The recent King’s Speech re-confirmed that “[My Government…] will improve mental health provision for young people. It will ensure mental health is given the same attention and focus as physical health. My ministers will legislate to modernise the Mental Health Act, so it is fit for the twenty first century”.

When reform was originally announced, part of the stated rationale for this was that the current Act was “overused”, and then when the Bill was published, the intention was stated to be to “reform and modernise” the existing legislation. The notes to the King’s Speech specifically refer to the fact that the Act has not been fully updated for over 40 years. The notes cite reasons for the need for reform as including the disproportionate detentions of individuals from black and minority ethnic groups and, the fact that processes  are out of step with a modern mental health care system. Rates of detention are stated to have nearly doubled since 1983 when the Act was passed.

According to the notes the new legislation will:

• Revise the detention criteria under the Act to ensure detention and compulsory treatment only take place where necessary, because of a risk of serious harm to the individual or others, and where there is a reasonable prospect of therapeutic benefit from treatment.
• Detention periods will be shortened.
• Use of the Act for people with a learning disability and/or autism will be limited further.
• Patients will be given additional rights to be involved with planning their care and to make the choices about this.
• The “nearest relative” will be replaced by a new statutory role, the “nominated person”.
• Police Stations and prisons will not be available as ‘places of safety’ under the Act.
• There will be improvements to the support for offenders with severe mental health problems.

It remains to be seen when the latest version of the new Bill will be published, but the Government have already acknowledged that the reforms will take a number of years to implement, caused in part by the need to recruit sufficient additional clinical and judicial staff. Changes may therefore well be implemented in phases.

Our briefings on the proposals and previous comments on the Mental Health Bill can be found on our website. When the new Bill is published, these will be updated.