§ Lord Aveburyasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will issue a circular to special psychiatric hospitals when the Mental Health (Amendment) Bill has received the Royal Assent, asking them to inform patients transferred under a Section 72 direction, whose sentences have not ended, that they may apply to the Secretary of State asking for their cases to be referred to the mental health review tribunal.
§ Lord BelsteadAppropriate guidance will be given to any hospital which receives a prisoner on transfer under Section 72 of the Mental Health Act 1959 in respect of whom a restriction direction under Section 74 has also been made. (Prisoners transferred without a restriction direction have a right to apply to a tribunal even if their prison sentence has not expired.)1266WA With immediate effect, whenever a prisoner is transferred to hospital subject to a restriction direction, the receiving hospital will be requested by a letter from the Home Office to inform the patient that the Secretary of State will be willing to consider sympathetically any request which he may make for his case to be referred to a mental health review tribunal in the period before he acquires a statutory right to require that such a reference be made.