ABSTRACT
As in the 20s only a small number of MPs participated actively in the major debates on mental distress. The MP who described the incident called for less leniency and warned that the public might well refuse to co-operate in the implementation of community care policies if it felt that personal safety was at risk. The Minister need not have worried that the discrepancy between the official and the implicit bias against patients' rights be exposed: not even one MP spotted it. As in 1930, nurses were the professional group most frequently mentioned. MPs expressed concern over the acute shortage of nurses, recruitment programmes, low wages and unsatisfactory negotiation machinery. The Ministry shared with the professionals in the field and with the majority of MPs the assumption that patients' experiences and self reports were less valid than those of professionals and/or anybody else who was not suspected of being mentally ill.
