This will consign unfair and outdated treatment to history

For too long, our mental health laws have been a relic of another era. The 1983 Mental Health Act is older than many of the clinicians now working under it.

- WES STREETING

For four decades, it has too readily stripped vulnerable people of their dignity, their voice, and their agency. Its application has been unequal, leading to demonstrable racial inequalities.

It has seen autistic people and those with learning disabilities detained inappropriately. And it has left families often shut out of the care of their loved ones.

But this changes as we embark on a watershed moment for mental health care in Britain - the Mental Health Act receiving royal assent to become law.

This is a personal milestone as the first piece of legislation passed by my department under this government. But much more importantly, it’s a promise kept to the thousands of vulnerable people who have been failed for decades by a system stuck in the past.

Take Steve Gilbert, who, along with members of his family, has experienced at first hand the trauma and loss of dignity that many patients feel as a result of being detained under the act.