Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)

My Lords, I will first reflect on the introduction to this group from the noble Earl, Lord Howe. I found it deeply moving. As many of your Lordships know, I am a mental health nurse. I have worked in locked units and acute units. Some of the things that he just described happened 30 years ago. What is so sad is that they are still happening now. I will speak to the three amendments in my name, Amendments 14, 42 and 43. I thank other noble Lords who have added their names to them. These amendments have been drafted with help from the Royal College of Psychiatrists and are supported by several mental health patient and user groups and charities that work with the Mental Health All-Party Group in particular. Amendments 14 and 42 would ensure that advance choice documents within the Mental Health Act are aligned with the existing best practice on providing such documents. Amendment 43 would ensure that clinicians and relevant bodies have a responsibility or duty to consider the information that is provided in the advance choice documents and use it to inform care and treatment orders given under the Mental Health Act. This is important. Clinicians, nurses and social workers need time to undertake the responsibility of sharing what is in those documents and trying—even if they are not always able to—to design care that reflects what people have asked for before. We continue to have a shortage of staff in mental health and very tight budgets compared with some other parts of the health service. If this is put as a duty in the Mental Health Act, it will help to resolve some of those issues. I hope that the Minister can support the amendments, so that the rights of some of the most vulnerable patients from all ethnic groups in this country are strengthened within the documents, with the right to ensure that staff have enough time to deliver what is in the documents.