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The Origins of the Mental Health Act 1983: Doctors in the House

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Robert Bluglass
Robert Bluglass*
Affiliation:
Professor of Forensic Psychiatry, University of Birmingham
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The role played by the House of Commons in the legislative process has been steadily changing since the Reform Acts of the nineteenth century. Previously, most of the Commons' legislative work consisted in passing private measures initiated and introduced by individual Members of Parliament concerned with, and knowledgeable about, local issues which required change. The growth of an increasingly vocal and educated mass electorate, the pressures of mass-membership political parties, and the increasing specialization of an industrial society, all increased the need for wider legislation, particularly for public social measures, and its initiation passed from the hands of individual members to the Government Parliament as a law-making body moved towards a more formal constitutional and legal role. Its twentieth century task is more often the legitimation of legislative changes originating elsewhere.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bulletin of the Royal College of Psychiatrists , Volume 8 , Issue 7 , July 1984 , pp. 127 - 134
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1984

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