Draft Mental Health Act
Reform Bill
“My Ministers will publish draft legislation to reform the Mental
Health Act.”
The purpose of the draft Bill is to:
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● Ensure patients suffering from mental health
conditions have greater control over their treatment and
receive the dignity and respect they deserve.
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● Make it easier for people with learning disabilities
and autism to be discharged from hospital.
The main benefits of the draft Bill would be:
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● Modernising the Act so that it is fit for the 21st
century and provides a framework for services in which people
experiencing the most serious mental health conditions can
receive more personalised care, with more choice and
influence over their treatment and a greater focus on
recovery.
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● Helping to address the existing disparities in the
use of the Act for people from ethnic minority backgrounds –
especially for detentions and for the use of Community
Treatment Orders.
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● Ensuring that detentions only happen where strictly
necessary.
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● Improving how we support offenders with acute mental
health needs, ensuring they have access to the right
treatment, in the right setting, at the right time – with
faster transfers from prison to hospital, and new powers to
discharge patients into the community while ensuring the
public is protected.
The main elements of the draft Bill are:
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● Amending the definition of mental disorder so that
people can no longer be detained solely because they have a
learning disability or because they are autistic.
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● Changing the criteria needed to detain people, so
that the Act is only used where strictly necessary: where the
person is a genuine risk to their own safety or that of
others, and where there is a clear therapeutic benefit.
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● Giving patients better support, including offering
everyone the option of an independent mental health advocate,
and allowing patients to choose their own ‘nominated person’,
rather than have a ‘nearest relative’ assigned for them.
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● Introducing a 28-day time-limit for transfers from
prison to hospital for acutely ill prisoners and ending the
temporary use of prison for those awaiting assessment or
treatment.
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● Introducing a new form of supervised community
discharge. This will allow the discharge of restricted
patients into the community, with the necessary care and
supervision to adequately and appropriately manage their
risk.
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● Increasing the frequency with which patients can make
appeals to Tribunals on their detention and provide Tribunals
with a power to recommend that aftercare services are put in
place.
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● Introducing a statutory care and treatment plan for
all patients in detention. This will be written with the
patient and will set out a clear pathway to discharge.
Territorial extent and application
● The draft Bill will extend and apply to England and Wales only.
Wider action on mental health
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● Last year our Mental Health Recovery Action Plan,
backed by a one-off targeted investment of £500 million,
ensured additional support for members of groups which have
been most impacted by COVID-19, including; those with severe
mental illness, young people, and front-line staff.
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● We remain committed to our ambitious plans to expand
and transform NHS mental health services to reach an
additional two million people, backed by £2.3 billion more in
real terms per year by 2023 to 2024.
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● This includes the establishment of 33 new maternal
mental health services, bringing together psychological
therapy, maternity services and reproductive health for women
who have mental health needs following trauma or loss related
to their maternity experience. These services will be
available across the whole of England by March 2024.
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● We are also accelerating the roll out of mental
health support teams in schools and colleges across the
country, meaning 399 teams will be up and running by 2023.
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● The Department of Health and Social Care is running a
Call for Evidence seeking views to inform a new 10-Year
Mental Health Plan and updated National Suicide Prevention
Plan which will build on current progress, assessing how
local services can work together to prevent mental ill health
to level up mental health across the country and put mental
and physical health on an equal footing.
Key facts
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● In 2020-21, there were around 53,000 detentions under
the Act in England, an estimated 4.5 per cent increase from
2019-20. Rates of detention have nearly doubled since 1983,
and between 2007-16 the number of detentions rose by over 40
per cent.
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● In 2020-21, black people were four times more likely
than white people to be detained under the Act, and over ten
times more likely to be placed on a Community Treatment
Order.
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● A total of 1,520 restricted patients were admitted to
hospital for treatment under the Act in 2020. Restricted
patients are offenders subject to special controls in the
justice system, for example after a court sentence or
transfer from prison.
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● Trends are particularly worrying for children and
young people, with rates of probable mental health disorders
in six to 16 year olds rising from 11.6 per cent in 2017 to
17.4 per cent in 2021. More people than ever are receiving
support for a mental health crisis and, tragically, the
numbers of those ending their life through suicide have
broadly increased over the past decade.
