B

Baroness Neuberger (CB)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 24 February 2025

Debate

Mental Health Bill [HL]

Contribution

My Lords, I will speak very briefly in support of Amendments 163 and 164, to which I have added my name, and particularly about the length of time, the five years. We first started talking about the reforms to the mental health legislation eight years ago, when we set up the review of the legislation under Sir Simon Wessely, and I was the vice-chair. It reported in 2018—seven years ago—and it was not even a very radical rethink of our mental health legislation. Yes, it will make a lot of difference to a lot of people—service users are very keen for this to come about, and they certainly do not want to wait longer than five years to see all the measures come into force—but this is relatively gentle stuff. At some stage we will need a much more radical rethink of our mental health legislation. Five years is quite a long time, so I rather hope the Minister can give us some comfort by saying that most of it will be done in two years, or perhaps three years at the outside.

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