Scottish Mental Health Law Review - Additional Proposals

Overview

This consultation outlines some of the proposals for change to the law put forward by the Executive Team of the Scottish Mental Health and Incapacity Law Review. They have been developed in partnership with people with lived experience, including unpaid carers, and mental health practitioners through a series of Advisory Groups and Reference Groups. 

Aims of Consultation

Our March 2022 consultation set out some of the proposals for change to mental health and incapacity law put forward by the Executive team of the Scottish Mental Health and Incapacity Law Review (the Review). We are really grateful to everyone who responded to that consultation.

We said that we would be doing more work on specific areas and seeking views, before writing our final report, which will be given to Scottish Ministers by the end of September. These areas included work on advance statements, independent advocacy and how criminal law and mental health law work together. This consultation ask for your views on these subjects.

We would like your views on the changes we are proposing to the way advance statements should work in the future, how the way independent advocacy is provided should change, and how we can improve the way criminal law and mental health law work together.

Like our other consultations you can answer as few or as many of the questions as you wish.

Please follow these link to access complete consultation documents:

• PDF version 
• HTML version 
• Easy read version

Responding to this Consultation

We are inviting responses to this consultation by 22 July 2022

Handling your response

If you respond online, you will be directed to the ‘About You’ page before submitting your response. Please indicate how you wish your response to be handled and, in particular, whether you are content for your response to published. If you ask for your response not to be published, we will regard it as confidential, and we will treat it accordingly.

Next steps in the process

If you have given permission for your response to be made public, and after we have checked that they contain no potentially defamatory material, responses will be made available to the public at: www.smhlr.scot

If you respond online you will receive a copy of your response via email.

Following the closing date, all responses will be analysed and considered along with other available evidence to inform recommendations in our final report. Responses will be published where we have been given permission to do so.

We will send a final report to the Scottish Ministers by the end of September 2022.

Why your views matter

The recommendations being consulted on could lead to a fundamental change in mental health and incapacity legislation, bringing it more in line with human rights law and the ambitions set out in the United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities. 

Your views will help refine or change these recommendations and allow the Review Executive team  to put together a final set of recommendations for the Scottish Government. It will then be up to Scottish Ministers to decide how many of the recommendations they act on, how they do this, and the timing of any changes to the law.

For more information about the Review Homepage | Scottish Mental Health Law Review

What happens next

If you have given permission for your response to be made public, and after we have checked that they contain no potentially defamatory material, responses will be made available to the public.

If you respond online you will receive a copy of your response via email.

Following the closing date, all responses will be analysed and considered along with other available evidence to inform recommendations in our final report. Responses will be published where we have been given permission to do so.

We will send a final report to the Scottish Ministers by the end of September 2022.  This report will be published.