To ask the Secretary of State for Health pursuant to her statement of 16 April 2007, Official Report, column 58, on the Mental Health Bill, what the evidential basis was for stating that several thousand people have been denied treatment on the grounds that they are not susceptible to treatment. (135818)

Under the Mental Health Act, the decision to offer treatment of a patient presenting with a personality disorder(s) (PD) it is a matter of individual clinical judgement. Until very recently appropriate and evidence based interventions for PD have been very limited and their availability nationally inequitable. The prevalence of PD in the general adult population is between 10 to 13 per cent. and upward of 63 per cent. in the offender population. It is therefore a reasonable assumption that over the years since 1984, when the legislation came into force, that thousands of individual mainstream and forensic patients will not have gained access to appropriate treatments for their PD.