This afternoon the Secretary of State for Health announced that the Department of Health is taking action to correct an irregularity in the application of the Mental Health Act 1983.
A technical issue has been identified in the way some strategic health authorities have been administering the process for approving doctors to work under the Act. This involves how doctors who have been recommended by an expert panel for work assessing and detaining patients have had that recommendation approved.
The issue is a technical irregularity involving the approval of the doctors who make the assessments – not the validity of the assessments themselves.
Read the letter from Shaun Gallagher to local authorities chief executives.