Baroness Barker (LD)

My Lords, now is not the time to have the extensive debate that the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, has opened up. I said right at the outset that we are talking about legislation that comes into play when a person is going to be detained because they are very ill and at risk of harming themselves or somebody else. But I would say to the noble Baroness that the Wessely review looked at this issue at considerable length, and I was among the Peers who listened to Sir Simon Wessely when he came to present his findings. One thing that has stuck with me is the person who gave evidence to his review who said: “I was very ill. I had to have treatment. Why did it have to feel so awful?”—I am using parliamentary language there. Does the noble Baroness accept that mental health legislation debates such as this might be limited, but they do an important thing in sometimes challenging the prevailing orthodoxy among the professions, and they are an occasion where the experience of patients, which have built up over many years, gets a chance to change practice? That is why we should look at all the amendments in this group, and in particular those of the noble Earl, Lord Howe.