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History of the Mental Health Act 2007

  • Last modified date:
    3 September 2007

The steps in the review of the Mental Health Act 1983 have been:

Expert committee appointed in October 1998, publishing the Richardson report in July 1999

Following this a Green Paper on the Reform of the Mental Health Act 1983 was published in November 1999

Then a White paper on Reforming the Mental Health Act 1983 was published in December 2000

From this a Draft Mental Health Bill 2002 and consultation document were published in June 2002

The responses from the 2002 consultation exercise led to a refinement of the Bill and a revised draft Mental Health Bill was published in September 2004:

Improving Mental Health Law, Towards a new Mental Health Act, was published in September 2004 to accompany the 2004 draft Mental Health Bill:

The Bill was subject to pre-legislative scrutiny. A joint House of Commons and House of Lords Committee published a report on the draft Bill on 23 March 2005:

The Government's response to the Joint Committee's report was published on 13 July 2005:

Government announces new approach on 23 March 2006:

Government  announces policy in response to the judgement of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of HL v UK (the Bournewood judgement), June 2006:

The Mental Health Bill was introduced into the House of Lords on Thursday 16 November 2006, it was then transferred to the House of Commons on 7 March 2007 and received Royal Assent on 19 July 2007.

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