Baroness Murphy (CB)

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 49 on this issue. I do not disagree with anything that has been said about the vital need for communication and to ensure that the patient understands what is happening and has access to specialist help. But I particularly want to comment on the proposal that speech and language therapists should become responsible clinicians. The role of responsible clinician under the Mental Health Act is really quite onerous. Of the 50,000 or so clinicians who take on the role and are appointed the responsible clinician when somebody is detained, the vast majority are consultant doctors. Fewer than 100—0.002%—have been psychologists or nurses. The appetite for taking on this role is low and, of all the members of the team who could take it on, it would be appropriate only in a very small minority of cases for it to be speech and language therapists. I do not want to rule them out because I know how valuable these people are, but we must see that, in practice, this will probably not fly very far. It is important that we concentrate on how we get proper communications, but this particular amendment would probably not find favour. I do not think that profession is yet trained to the full extent of what would be required for that role. Although I hope that it will be one day, this Bill is maybe too early for it.