Member

We hear stories about autistic people and people with a learning disability being stuck on wards for an average of nearly five years, where they face being overmedicalised and institutionalised, sometimes to the extent that they can barely get out of bed. These detentions lead to severe lifelong trauma, which can be incredibly difficult to overcome. This leads to an obvious risk of readmission after they are discharged into the community. I feel this is little short of—to use the phrase that the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, used—a human rights scandal, and it has to end. I believe that an explicit focus on therapeutic benefit when delivering treatment is one way that the Bill can help to achieve that. We simply must grab hold of this opportunity.