NEW: Ministers announce plan to publish draft legislation to reform the Mental Health Act in #QueensSpeech
The purpose of the draft bill is to
➡️ Limit detentions of people with a learning disability and autistic people in hospital
➡️ Help tackle disparities & reduce number of people from minority ethnic backgrounds detained
➡️ Reduce the use of community treatment orders
➡️ Limit detentions of people with a learning disability and autistic people in hospital
➡️ Help tackle disparities & reduce number of people from minority ethnic backgrounds detained
➡️ Reduce the use of community treatment orders
Its changes will also include rebalancing threshold for detention - determining risk to public & therapeutic benefits, plus a strengthening of rights to express treatment preference / care plan
Officials said the Bill would take forward the majority of recommendations made by @WesselyS 2018 review of how Mental Health Act is used in practice
PM @BorisJohnson described current mental health laws as “antiquated” & said every person deserves to be treated with dignity
CEO of @Rethink_ @charitablemark says while milestone "cause for celebration" some details are still to be finalised - including funding 
Main elements of draft bill below. Some key figures: In 2020/21, there were around 53k detentions under the Act in England (up 4.5 per cent on 2019/20). Black people were 4x more likely than white people to be detained & 10x more likely to receive a community treatment order
On the 28-day prison transfer point, see @HSJnews investigation by @HayleyLEK & I from December: hsj.co.uk/mental-health/…
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