Speeches by Stafford.

“Further to that point of order, Mr Vickers. I should say it was the Liberal Democrats who pointed it out to me; I do not want to take the credit from them.”

“Hear, hear!”

“I want to pick up on a few points made by my gallant and learned hon. Friend the Member for Solihull West and Shirley. He talked about people who, like many of us, have seen the benefits of assessments online. There could well be benefits from clause 19 for that. He also talked about how some people did not find that a…”

“I rise to speak to clauses 15, 17 and 18 and Liberal Democrat amendment 13 to clause 18. I note the hon. Member for Winchester is not here; I do not know whether he intends to push amendment 13 to a vote but, just in case he does, I shall speak to it. As colleagues across the Committee have said, ECT is a very controve…”

“I rise to talk briefly about clauses 13 and 14, which I generally and genuinely support. Clause 13 addresses a long-standing ethical and legal tension: how to balance the need for treatment with a patient’s right to refuse it, especially when they may have made advance decisions or have legal representatives. Let me ex…”

“Before my hon. Friend moves on to the amendments, I want to press him on the point about training, which my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull West and Shirley brought up. I support the change to the thresholds for detention but, given that it is potentially quite a significant change, what level of training will be r…”

“I entirely agree with my hon. Friend’s request to the Government for a review two years after implementation. Does he agree that it needs to be cross-governmental? The Home Office and other bodies such as the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the NHS will need to be involved.”

“I will keep my remarks relatively brief. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hinckley and Bosworth has pointed out, Members on this side of the House entirely support clause 8, mainly because of the change towards a therapeutic focus, which ensures that all compulsory treatment must have a clear clinical benefit. The clau…”

“We are trying to future-proof the Bill as much as possible. Does my hon. Friend think that the clause has enough future-proofing to deal with mental health issues that we are currently unaware of, or issues whose nature or treatment we do not fully understand?”

“On a point of order, Mr Vickers. Just to be clear, I counted six Noes, and I think you announced five. Can we just check on that?”

“I rise briefly to dilate on clause 6, on Liberal Democrat amendment 11 and on Government amendment 30. Those of us on the Health and Social Care Committee recently had a fascinating panel about the disparities for black and minority ethnic groups in maternity, and it does not end there, as we can see from the evidence …”

“I confess that I do not entirely follow the hon. Lady’s argument. My understanding is that the people she has listed—for example, hospital security staff—are not covered at the moment, so I do not think that that is the case. As I said in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Hinckley and Bosworth, there are situat…”

“The clause is a necessary reset—[Interruption.] Goodness, what a background noise! If only I had such a response to everything I said. The clause is rooted in the central recommendation of the 2018 independent review of the Mental Health Act, that the criteria for detention are too broad and being applied too inconsist…”

“My hon. Friend is making a clear point, but I want to add that there are clearly places and situations in which non-police professionals, such as mental health professionals, deal with extremely dangerous and violent patients. They are appropriately trained to do so. It is not in isolation that non-police public profes…”

“I am interested in the hon. Member’s argument, but it seems to be entirely the opposite of the one he made when he intervened on me on Second Reading. He said then: “Sections 135 and 136 of the current Mental Health Act give the police the power to break into someone’s property or detain somebody in a public place wher…”

“I agree with my hon. Friend. I think we agree on both sides of the Committee that, where appropriate, police should not be the first responders to this issue, although, obviously, there will be situations where they should be. If the Government push ahead with removing the amendments, is there any indication in the Bil…”

“I think, from what my hon. Friend has said and what the Minister said at the outset, that Members on both sides of the Committee want the same thing, which as far as possible is to keep the police out of the making of these decisions, unless of course—I made this point on Second Reading and was intervened on by the hon…”

“To take that point slightly further, given that pretty much every local authority has a different set of criteria by which to determine people’s housing needs, how would, for example, an ICB that potentially crosses multiple local authorities with differing housing needs be able to understand the complexities within th…”

“I thank my hon. Friend for his extraordinarily helpful intervention. I was not aware of the changes, and I certainly had not heard of fusion before, or about what is going on in Scotland. Of course, if the new clause had already been enacted in another part of the United Kingdom in some form, I would be much more comfo…”

“I will do my best, Mr Vickers. The hon. Lady raises some good points. She made a slightly party political point, but I will forgive her because I made one earlier. Maybe that is our party politicking done for the day. As the vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for SEND, I recognise the issues that the hon. …”