Mr. Vivian Geiran:

I just want to make a couple of points. In what I am going to say, I do not want to minimise the suffering of people, as has been described, or the acute situations that they end up in or can end up in, nor do I want to negate or deny the need for biomedical or pharmacological treatment in certain cases. I am, however, reminded of the phrase that "hard cases make bad laws". I would be wary of the potential for going down a route where we would open a doorway into a certain type of treatment on the basis that certain bad acute things can happen in certain situations.

As I said earlier, in the legislation and the principles involved we should be looking for the most inclusive and the least restrictive types of treatment. This does not mean that people do not need medication at particular times, but we are tending to focus to some extent on the extreme scenarios that might, arguably, include involuntary admission or whatever. If that is the focus for the legislation and what we are about, I do not believe the legislation should be about just ensuring access to a kind of inner circle - and I do not want to sound disparaging - of extreme treatment on the basis of certain extreme types of situations that might arise.

Going back to my first point, I do not want to negate the suffering or the tragic situations that people can end up in at certain points, but I do not believe that is where we should be starting from with regard to the legislation.