CONSEQUENTIAL AMENDMENTS (Hansard, 19 February 1980)

§ The Solicitor-General

I beg to move amendment No. 2, in page 10, line 13, at end insert— '(2) In section 128(1) of that Act (sexual intercourse with patients) for the words "Part III of this Act" there shall be substituted the words "the Residential Homes Act 1980".'.

Again, the Committee no doubt will have noted the point here. It is a consequential amendment.

Section 128 of the Mental Health Act 1959 makes it an offence for a man to have sexual intercourse with a woman who is a mentally disordered patient and who is in his guardianship or otherwise in his custody or care as a resident in a residential home for mentally disordered 404 persons within the meaning of part III of the 1959 Act.

The provisions of part III concerning residential homes are consolidated in this Bill. The reference to part III is therefore inappropriate, hence the consequential amendment.

§ The Solicitor-General

I beg to move amendment No. 3, in line 16, leave out from 'etc.)' to "Section' in line 18 and insert 'for paragraph 31 there shall be substituted the following paragraph— 31'.

This is another amendment that arises consequentially upon the enactment of this Bill. Part II of schedule 3 to the Local Government Act 1966 lists various statutory provisions that, under section 35 of the Act, may be amended by ministerial order. They include 31. Section 37(2) of the National Assistance Act 1948 (including subsection (2) as applied by section 19 of the Mental Health Act 1959). These provisions will be so well known to the Committee that I need add only a very little. However, I should say that originally the present Bill was not intended to consolidate section 19 of the 1959 Act, and the reference to that Act was retained in paragraph 3 of schedule 1. Now the Bill consolidates section 19, as right hon. and hon. Members will have seen from the table of derivations, so the reference to section 19 is deleted from the 1966 Act by the device of replacing the whole of paragraph 31 in the 1968 Act by the reference to the appropriate clause of the Bill, which is clause 2(2).