New mental health powers threaten rights, claim lawyers

By Nina Lakhani
The Independent
Oct. 06, 2008

Lawyers are lining up to challenge the legality of the new Mental Health Act as fears about the imminent new powers grow among patients.

The legislation was passed in July amid controversy after seven years of opposition from a coalition of 75 organisations.

The new law introduces a much wider definition of mental disorder which could see people with an "untreatable" personality disorder sectioned and brought into hospital.

Nurses, occupational therapists and social workers will be given new powers previously reserved for doctors. Patients detained in care homes could be forced to pay for treatment they do not want.

A campaign by this newspaper helped to ensure that a number of safeguards was written into the new Act. But at least five key aspects of the controversial Act could breach human rights law, meaning the Government would be forced to revisit the legislation as early as 2013, according to the Law Society.

It said there had been widespread calls to follow the example of the 2003 Scottish Act, which complies with the European Convention on Human Rights, but these had been dismissed.

Tim Spencer Lane, of the Law Society, said: "The old 1983 Act is the most challenged English law in the European Court of Human Rights. The new Act is like a band aid measure which may survive five years of challenges at the most.

"Sooner or later the Government is going to have to bite the bullet and bring in something like the Scottish Act, which is what Northern Ireland is planning to do. People in England and Wales deserve a mental health law based on civil liberties rather than one based on 1950s principles of locking people up."

A Department of Health spokesperson said the Act was "part of our strategy to reform and improve mental health care. We do not believe it contravenes human rights legislation."