Spotlight on the Mental Health Bill

It’s all go in the world of Mental Health at the minute!

• The Joint Committee on Human Rights published a report on 19 May 2025 with proposed amendments to the Mental Health Bill following its scrutiny.
• The Public Bill Committee published this call for evidence on 20 May 2025 and will meet for the first time this week to consider the Bill. It is expected to report by Thursday 26 June.
• The Mental Health Bill has passed its second reading in the House of Commons and now proceeds to Committee Stage for further scrutiny. It is also expected to report to the House by 26 June 2025.

Joint Committee 

While the Joint Committee welcomed the ‘broad thrust’ of reforms to mental health detention and compulsory treatment and the strengthening of the patient voice, it found that there was ‘still room for improvement’ in a few areas to enhance human rights protections. 

Key areas include:

• Protection of children’s rights
• Preventing autistic people or people with learning disabilities from being detained for these conditions alone
• Racial and ethnic inequalities
• Human rights protection for mental health patients in state commissioned but privately provided care
• Prisons and the transfer of prisoners to more appropriate settings

Appendix 1 of the Joint Committee’s report sets out the proposed amendments to the Bill.  Many of these will be familiar to readers already and are echoed by amendments proposed by others.

In summary, they are:

• Supporting the aims to the mental health reform: Retain the requirement to offer de-briefing to mental health patients after they have left hospital, so that personal experience can be learned from in future.
• Ensure mental health needs are properly identified before they reach crisis point: Introduce an English equivalent to the right to a mental health assessment that appears in the Mental Health (Wales) Measure 2010.
• Interface between Mental Health Act and Mental Capacity Act: The Government should carry out an urgent review of the interface between the MHA and MCA.
• Children: A requirement that a child should not be placed on an adult ward unless that placement is demonstrably in the child's best interests.
• Race discrimination: The inclusion of an additional guiding principle of equity in the Bill to address the need for equitable treatment under the MHA.
• Human rights protections: An amendment to ensure that the Human Rights Act, and the protection it provides, applies whenever people receive publicly funded mental health treatment or after–care, or are deprived of their liberty on mental health grounds. This protection should not depend on whether or not the provider itself is public or private. 

The Government should also consider carrying out a wider review of the scope of the terms “public authority” and “functions of a public nature” in section 6 HRA to address any other similar and unjustified human rights protection gaps that may exist.

• Restricted patients and deprivation of liberty: An amendment to refer restricted patients to the Mental Health Tribunal after six months (instead of 12 months) and case reviews every 12 months (in place of two years). This amendment would provide restricted patients with a more prompt and frequent review of their treatment by the Tribunal.

Committee Stage of Mental Health Bill

Today (10 June) the Mental Health Bill advances to the Committee Stage in the House of Commons.

There have been a lot of proposed amendments to the Bill. If you look at this page you will see that at the time of writing there are at least 56!

We have selected a couple below that are likely to be of greatest interest:

Advance choice documents – Help and information for patients

The proposed amendments provide further clarity about how the duties on NHS England and Integrated Care Boards should be implemented. 

The amendments provide that NHSE and ICBs must make arrangements to:

• make information about ACDs available to people for whom they are responsible (by having a conversation with someone who is suitably qualified, whether in-person or remotely) and
• help those people it considers appropriate to create ACDs. 

NHS commissioners will also be required to have regard to the particular benefits of to a person of making an ACD within 12 months of their discharge from a hospital or registered establishment.  

Section 117 funded after-care and private care providers

Amendments are proposed to extend the application of the Human Rights Act 1998 to ‘certain private care providers’ providing section 117 after-care services in England and Wales under the Mental Health Act. 

The amendment seeks to extend the remit of the Human Rights Act to private care providers when providing after-services arranged or paid for by public authorities. This is because the High Court decision in Sammut found that private care providers are not bound by the Human Rights Act, as they are not considered to be public authorities. This amendment would ensure that all mental health patients in state commissioned care have the same human rights legal protections – irrespective of whether the state or a private provider provides that care or treatment. 

Other amendments

As observed by Tim Spencer-Lane in his recent LinkedIn post, the Government has tabled other amendments which seek to overturn the opposition amendments made to the Bill in the House of Lords.

The amendments sought to be removed include: 

1. Powers of detention: Extension of police powers of detention to other specified health and social care professionals under sections 135 and 136.
2. Community treatment orders: The 12-month maximum duration for community treatment orders, which could only be extended if a second registered psychiatrist gives their written agreement.
3. Nominated Persons and those under 16: A hierarchy for the appointment of a Nominated Person by an Approved Mental Health Professional for those aged under 16, who lack competence to choose their own.
4. IMHA duty: A duty on an Independent Mental Health Advocate to hold a de-brief meeting with mental health patients after they have left hospital, to review their experience of hospital treatment.

There’s so much to keep abreast of currently. We will endeavour to keep readers updated.  We understand that the Committee is expected to report to the House of Commons by 26 June.

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