Draft Mental Health Bill

Re-elected a joint chair of this all party group although I will freely admit that Lynne Jones does more work than Virginia Bottomley and I put together.

Interesting meeting discussing some of the incompatabilities between the mental capacity bill and the draft Mental Health Bill. A lot of service users attend the meetings and they were very sceptical about some of the ministerial promises with regard to compulsion re treatment etc.

Lynne and I took a couple of key people off for a rink in the Pugin room afterwards to discuss how we could raise the profile of the group. The bottom line is that this would cost money and there is a bit of a reluctance to accept drug company money (even though we know that this comes with no strings attached) until we know the outcome of the current Health Select Committee enquiry into the pharmaceutical industry.