Published: 21/07/2005, Volume II5, No. 5956 Page 8
The government has pledged to push ahead with the controversial Mental Health Bill and rejected criticism that it is too focused on public protection rather than patient rights.
Last week, publishing its response to a heavily critical report from a Commons pre-legislative scrutiny committee, ministers said they had accepted in full or in part well over half of the committee's 107 recommendations.
But they rejected the central theme of the committee's report - that the draft bill is too focused on public safety, and should be reworded so that people can only be detained 'for the protection of other persons from significant risk of serious harm'.
They also rejected calls for separate legislation for people with dangerous and severe personality disorder. However, ministers pledged that the bill would not become law until increases in the workforce it requires have been achieved.
This includes looking again at the number of extra staff that will be required to staff mental health tribunals, which have increased powers under the proposed legislation.
Mental health experts warned that there was an 'urgent' need to assess workforce plans, given the existing high vacancy rates for psychiatrists and psychiatric nurses.
South Essex Partnership trust chief executive Patrick Geoghegan said the bill's emphasis on public protection meant that risk management would be increasingly difficult.
'Trusts will have a duty to provide an assessed need [setting out what treatment a patient requires], and if we do not provide that we will be failing.
'We will be blamed if the public are not protected, and the emphasis on public protection is going to revitalise the stigma around public health that we are trying to get rid of.' He said it was vital that mental health trusts conducted an analysis of what they thought the workforce needs would be, in order to be able to compare it with Department of Health estimates.
'Now we know the bill is definitely coming we need to urgently know if we can achieve workforce plans, and need lead in times for implementation, ' he said.
NHS Confederation policy manager Jane Austin said that it was still unproven that the number of psychiatrists promised in the mental health national service framework could be appointed.
She added that as tribunals were likely to sit more often if the bill became law, they would be time consuming.
'How are they going to achieve those numbers, and if it can be achieved are the tribunals going to be the best use of that resource?'
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