Alex RKGiven the announcement in today’s King’s Speech that “the government will… legislate to modernise the Mental Health Act,” or, in more detail in the background briefing (at page 84), that “the Mental Health Bill will deliver our manifesto commitment to modernise the Mental Health Act 1983 which is woefully out of date. The Bill will make it fit for the 21st century so that patients have greater choice, autonomy, rights and support, and make sure all patients are treated with dignity and respect throughout their treatment,” I thought that it might be useful to put together some resources for people wanting to understand where this has come from and where it might be going.
Chaired by Sir Simon Wessely, the independent review of the Mental Health Act 1983 (to which I was the legal adviser) reported in 2018. A summary of the report can be found here. Some early commentaries on the review’s report can be found here.
The draft Mental Health Bill brought forward by the previous Government can be found here. My unofficial annotated version of the current Mental Health Act 1983 if it were to be amended by that Bill can be found here.
A Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament was convened to scrutinise that draft Bill, and its report can be found here (together with my walkthrough of it). The previous Government responded to that report here.
The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology has published two reports on mental health reform, one on improving patient choice and on autistic people and people with learning disability. The House of Commons Library has published a wider research briefing here.
For those wanting to locate reforms in this space in a wider context, this presentation may be of some interest.
We do not know what the legislation to be brought forward will look like, but hopefully the materials set out above may be of use to people in the meantime.
