Baroness Barker (LD)

My Lords, I thank everybody who has taken part in the debate on this group of amendments. We were, in essence, trying to get answers to the following questions. Who is responsible for drawing up the care plans and for reviewing the care (education) and treatment reviews? Who is responsible for ensuring that what is in those plans is compliant with the law? Who is responsible for making sure that it actually happens? Who is responsible for finding out whether it has not happened? Who carries the can if it has not happened? At various points in the Minister’s answer, I was quite hopeful, then, towards the end, we went down the slope quite badly, because it turns out that, apparently, duties will not be put on people, and that is highly regrettable. The Minister does not need to explain to the Committee the difference between a statutory code of practice and a statutory instrument; the issue my noble friend was trying to get to is the extent to which Members of this House will see that these plans reflect what was intended in the law and what scope they will have to call it out if they do not. I am pleased that it will be a statutory code of practice. That is one step up from nothing—it is not great, but it is better. I am also glad that the Minister said that care and treatment plans will be put in regulations. Will those regulations be done under the affirmative or the negative procedure? That is quite important. In light of all our discussions, we in this House should have the chance to examine that at considerable length and, if it is not right, to have a second go at it. It is always salutary to sit and listen to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, on the subject on which she is quite rightly famous, not just in the House but outside it. I listened to her strong statement. She will know from other discussions that we have had on the wider subject of health that I have said many times, and I believe it to be true, that we have a health and social care system that is openly predicated on people’s families doing much of the work, and that is never more so than when it comes to discharge. She will have heard me bang on about this before, but I have a considerable degree of concern about what happens to people who do not have families or children. We have never done research on hospital discharge, but I suspect that, if people do not have a relative standing by the bed saying, “No. You are not discharging this person because they are not fit to go home”, they end up being discharged far too early, and I suspect they then go back into hospital as acute admissions a result of that. That said, I understand what the noble and learned Baroness says about the involvement of parents. However, in 10% of cases, the parent is not the right person. We have heard that in evidence before, which she may recall, where young people who have been subject to mental health treatment have talked about problems within their families. Similarly, people under the Mental Capacity Act have sometimes been the subject of overbearing, overprotective parenting that they have found to be detrimental to them. I am not being anti-parent or asking that parents be excluded. Nobody knows better than the noble and learned Baroness that families are complex, and, as the Minister said, we must make sure that there is the scope to do the right thing for a child.