Scottish Government

Part 6: Responding to the consultation paper

6.1 We are inviting written responses to this consultation paper by Friday 6 ^th November 2009.

6.2 Part 5 of this paper asks a number of consultation questions on which we would welcome your views. Please respond to as many or as few of the questions as you wish, indicating in your response which questions your comments relate to. Please give reasons for your views and information from your own experience where appropriate.

6.3 If you have further comments on the operation of the Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003 which are outwith the remit of the consultation paper but are of concern to you, then please feel free to draw them to our attention.

6.4 Please send your response to the consultation questions along with your completed respondent information form (see "handling your response") to:

mentalhealthlaw@scotland.gsi.gov.uk or

Joanna Keating

If you have any queries please contact Joanna Keating on 0131 244 2599.

6.5 This consultation, and all other Scottish Government consultation exercises, can be viewed online on the consultation web pages of the Scottish Government website at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations. You can telephone Freephone 0800 77 1234 to find out where your nearest public internet access point is.

6.6 The Scottish Government now has an email alert system for consultations ( SEconsult: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations/seconsult.aspx). This system allows stakeholder individuals and organisations to register and receive a weekly email containing details of all new consultations (including web links). SEconsult complements, but in no way replaces SG distribution lists, and is designed to allow stakeholders to keep up to date with all SG consultation activity, and therefore be alerted at the earliest opportunity to those of most interest. We would encourage you to register.

Handling your response

6.7 We need to know how you wish your response to be handled and, in particular, whether you are happy for your response to be made public. Please therefore also complete and return the respondent information form (provided along with this consultation paper and the Report) which forms part of the consultation, as this will ensure that we treat your response appropriately. If you ask for your response not to be published we will regard it as confidential, and will treat it accordingly, subject always to any legal requirements on the Scottish Government to disclose the information.

6.8 All respondents should be aware that the Scottish Government are subject to the provisions of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and would therefore have to consider any request made to it under that Act for information relating to responses made to this consultation exercise

Next steps in the process

6.9 Where respondents have given permission for their response to be made public and after we have checked that they contain no potentially defamatory material, responses will be made available to the public in the Scottish Government Library (see the attached Respondent Information Form), these will be made available to the public in the Scottish Government Library by 4 ^th December 2009. You can make arrangements to view responses by contacting the SG Library on 0131 244 4552. Responses can be copied and sent to you, but a charge may be made for this service.

What happens next ?

6.10 Following the closing date, all responses will be analysed and considered along with any other available evidence to help us reach a decision on whether, and to what extent, the Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003 should be amended. We aim to issue our conclusions on this in 2010. If Scottish Ministers decide to proceed with amending legislation, a Bill would ultimately be required to be taken forward in the Scottish Parliament within a future legislative programme. Any changes that can be made more quickly for some issues that do not require primary legislation will be considered separately.

Comments and complaints

6.11 If you have any comments about how this consultation exercise has been conducted, please send them to Mental Health Division at the contact details shown above (under 'Responding to this consultation paper').