Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)

My Lords, as has already been acknowledged, I have put my name to Amendment 63, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, and Amendment 65, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler. Both of them have done a comprehensive job of introducing the amendments so I will be extremely brief. The noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, is well known in your Lordships’ House for championing the many issues affecting Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people. I particularly wanted to sign Amendment 63 because it is a very broad-ranging amendment—it is crucial that everybody gets culturally appropriate forms of explanation. It struck me as we were debating that we are focused now on mental health, but I think this probably would also apply right across the NHS to physical health because there are, of course, cultural differences in understanding our bodies, et cetera. If we imagine the case, perhaps, of a refugee who suffers mental health difficulties, having fled their home country, where they were subject to abuse by the authorities. It is important to make sure, if they are to be sectioned, that that is carefully explained to and understood by both the patient and potentially the patient’s family. There needs to be an extra level and a sensitivity to that person’s circumstances. We will all have different circumstances, but it is important to look at it in that broad frame. On Amendment 65, we have already canvassed quite extensively the way in which minoritised communities are currently seeing significant disparities in the way they are treated under the law in the area of mental health, particularly in community treatment orders. The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, described this as a probing amendment. Whether this is the exact means or not, it is clear that we have to have much better data and to make sure that as soon as trends and patterns emerge in that data, they are acted on. It is encouraging to hear that this is being piloted and work is being done but it is crucial that this becomes standard and that is why it is tempting to feel that it really has to be in the Bill.