has been in the role for three months, external<\/a>.<\/p>\nMHRTW had 43 medical members in 2024-25, but that number drops to just 19 eligible to sit on cases after McConnell’s decision.<\/p>\n
Simon Jones, Head of Policy and Campaigns at mental health charity Mind Cymru said: “Timely mental health tribunals are vitally important. <\/p>\n
“Delays can be harmful to the wellbeing of people who are sectioned, as well as undermine their rights.<\/p>\n
“It’s deeply concerning that an emergency bill is needed to enable the tribunal to access medical representatives for upcoming hearings. <\/p>\n
“The announcement raises several questions about how this situation was allowed to develop to the point where there is a risk to future hearings.<\/p>\n
“Both Welsh government and the tribunal must provide reassurances that medical members will have up-to-date clinical experience and that there is sufficient capacity for hearings whilst this legislation goes through the Senedd.”<\/p>\n
There is likely to be disruption until the new law comes into force.<\/p>\n
James, Labour Senedd member for Swansea West, went on to say that the MHRTW president had asked the 19 remaining members to make themselves available as much as possible.<\/p>\n
But she warned: “The clear advice of the judiciary is that there are not enough medical members to cover the volume of cases listed in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n
“Members without current licences, who are often retired from practice, have sat on a disproportionately high number of the tribunal’s cases. <\/p>\n
“All medical members of the MHRTW are GMC registered.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Counsel General Julie James said: “A technical issue has been identified in relation to the definition of ‘registered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[102,1906,6623,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-357072","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-mentalhealth","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}