MENTAL TREATMENT BILL. [H.L.] (Hansard, 29 May 1930)

THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (EARL RUSSELL)

My Lords, I beg to move that these Amendments be now considered. Your Lordships will notice that the list of Commons Amendments 1178 is rather long, but by far the larger number of them are purely drafting Amendments. For instance, the words "mental illness" have been substituted for the words "mental disorder," which was by way of softening the description of the treatment. Then the words "voluntary patient" have been substituted for "voluntary boarder." When we come to these Amendments perhaps your Lordships will allow me to move them where possible en bloc, because they are merely drafting Amendments. I think in the whole Bill your Lordships will find there are only two or three of the Amendments to which I need call your special attention. I beg to move.

§ VISCOUNT BRENTFORD

My Lords, if I may be allowed for a moment or two to make a general observation with regard to these Amendments, it will save time in dealing with them en bloc. As your Lordships know, I took a strong view against this Bill at a previous stage, a view which was not shared by the majority of your Lordships' House. My view in regard to many of the details of the Bill is still as strong as it was on the last occasion. It is the first time, I think, that voluntary patients have been allowed to place themselves in what we used to call a lunatic asylum. They can place themselves there without any certificate or any reception order. They can be placed there by their relations, again without any certificate, and when a man has been sufficiently lacking in volition to place himself as a voluntary patient he can then be detained there without being certified by any judicial body. He can even, if he recovers his sanity, or if he becosmes capable of volition—that is, I take it, recovers his sanity—still be kept there for twenty-eight days although, ex hypothesi, he is quite sane again, and he can also, by order of the representatives of the Board of Control, be kept without any judicial decision for six months. That is a provision of the Bill to which I take the very gravest exception.

I know the whole purpose of the Bill is to do away with the ordinary certificate—the safeguard of the subject in regard to lunacy proceedings for the last 100 years. In my view a certificate with a judicial authority is the greatest 1179 safeguard for the liberty of the subject. However, I realise that your Lordships, and the majority in another place, have come to the conclusion that my views are wrong and that the views of the majority are right. I have no wish to play the part of Athanasius contra mundum. But after all Athanasius may have been right and the world may have been wrong, and the world may subsequently, when this Bill comes to be reconsidered by another Royal Commission on the Lunacy Laws, think that you have gone too far. I do not wish to stand against what I think was on the last occasion the obvious view of the House, but I thought I ought to make this short statement. I propose to offer no further opposition to the passage of the Bill.