The most significant mental health legislation in 40 years is moving. With a team of two.

The Bill is at Lords Report Stage. The detention threshold changes — the new 'appropriate treatment' test replacing the 'treatability' test — survived Committee relatively intact. The bigger fight in the Lords has been over community treatment orders: a Lords amendment to significantly restrict CTO use (backed by the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the UN Special Rapporteur's concerns) was debated extensively. Government resisted full CTO abolition but accepted an amendment tightening the criteria for renewal. Your allies on this have been Baroness Tyler and Lord Crisp — they've co-ordinated effectively. The outstanding flashpoint is Section 136 — police powers to detain in a public place. An amendment requiring mental health professionals rather than police to make all section 136 decisions has cross-party support but the government is resisting on operational grounds.

Report Stage resumes in three weeks — check the Lords business calendar for the exact date of the mental health provisions grouping, as amendments are taken in groups. The members who've been most active and are likely to table or support amendments on section 136 are: Baroness Tyler (Lib Dem, former Mind CEO — your most natural ally), Lord Crisp (crossbench, former NHS CEO), and Baroness Bennett (Green, consistent on detention reform). On the government side, the lead minister is Baroness Merron — her brief is wide but she's been relatively open to evidence on section 136 compared to her Commons counterparts. Aim to brief all four individually before the grouping day — a one-page factual note, not a position paper. The Lords respond to clinical and human rights evidence; economic arguments land less well here than in Commons committee.

The 10-Year Plan published in January committed to growing the mental health workforce by 27% by 2034 — but the baseline it's measuring from is contested. NHS England's own data shows a significant gap between funded posts and filled posts. The Plan doesn't fully address the vacancy rate; it adds to the target workforce without explaining how to fill current vacancies first. For psychiatric nurses specifically, HEE (now NHS England Workforce, Training and Education) has a pipeline problem: training numbers increased post-2019 but attrition in the first two years of practice remains high. The Nuffield Trust published analysis in March that breaks this down by region — it's useful evidence for your parliamentary submissions because it shows the gap is heavily concentrated in specific areas (Midlands, North East) which maps onto specific MPs and select committee members you might engage.