VoiceAbility calls on MPs to strengthen changes to the Mental Health Act 1983
Our policy and public affairs lead provides an overview of what’s happening with mental health policy in England.
The 40-year-old Mental Health Act (MHA) is finally being updated after years of discussion and delays since an independent review first recommended changes in 2018. The MHA, under which people are ‘sectioned’ in mental health hospitals, includes rights to independent mental health advocacy.
Following work by VoiceAbility and others over the past few years, the new Mental Health Bill (MHB) being considered by the UK Parliament currently includes:
- Opt-out advocacy — where everyone detained under the MHA in England would be automatically referred to an independent mental health advocate by the hospital or healthcare provider
- A legal right to advocacy for patients who are in hospital voluntarily
- Other changes to strengthen the legal rights of patients in decision-making about their care and treatment whilst detained under the MHA
However, these changes to the MHA still don’t go far enough. Alongside the Challenging Behaviour Foundation, Mencap and the National Autistic Society, we’re working with parliamentarians to strengthen duties on government to provide better support for people with a learning disability and autistic people.
As we highlighted in our Use Your Power! campaign, over 2,000 people with a learning disability and autistic people are detained, often for many years, in mental health hospitals in England. This is leading to lifelong trauma and could largely be avoided with better community support.
We recently worked with supportive members of the House of Lords, led by Baroness Hollins, to try to change the law so that the UK government would have a duty to produce a ‘Community Services Sufficiency Plan’. This plan would be a roadmap for resourcing and commissioning sufficient community services for autistic people and people with a learning disability.
Unfortunately, this change was not supported by enough members of the House of Lords. However, Members of Parliament (MPs) in the House of Commons now have an opportunity to change the law, so, fortunately, we have the chance to try again.
Mental health lawyer Tim Spencer-Lane has provided a useful overview of the changes to the MHB made by the House of Lords. These include a new right for every patient discharged from a mental healthcare setting to provide feedback via an Independent Mental Health Advocate within 30 days of discharge. Advocacy providers will discuss this potential change with the UK government and MPs in the weeks ahead.
If you’d like to find out more about our mental health policy work, Stephen Hinchley is speaking at a webinar on mental health care at 2pm on 14 May 2025, organised by the Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB).
VoiceAbility contributed to the HSSIB’s recent patient safety investigations looking at mental healthcare in hospitals.
You can sign up to attend at on HSSIB's website.