Biography
Baroness Barker has engaged extensively with mental health legislation through 25 debate speeches, with particular focus on the Mental Health Bill across multiple parliamentary stages, addressing themes including the interface between mental health and capacity law, workforce planning, crisis response protocols, and protections against overuse of force. Beyond mental health, she has raised public health and prevention issues including HIV/AIDS funding and women's access to reproductive healthcare. Her contributions reflect sustained scrutiny of legislative detail and practical implementation challenges, often drawing on expert testimony and field engagement to ground her points.
Generated from their own Hansard record, below
“…is hitherto crime of attempted suicide is that it may be feared that some people may not be reached through the Mental Health Act; that there will be some who will not submit themselves to voluntary treatment, and cannot be persuaded by then medical advisers or members of their family to receive treatment.”
Record by topic
- Mental health91st of 88040.0
- Palliative & end of life care198th of 5688.0
- Learning disability & autism441st of 8998.0
- A&E & ambulance response97th of 2584.0
- Hospital discharge / bed-blocking114th of 1392.0
- Public health & prevention573rd of 6882.0
- Adult social care & reform312th of 3762.0
- NHS waiting lists467th of 5342.0
- NHS & care workforce/staffing236th of 3022.0
What they’ve said
“My Lords, the decision of the United States Government to end, almost without notice, funding to many multilateral programmes for HIV and AIDS has destroyed medical and scientific research networks across the world, particularly in Africa, and they cannot be rebuilt.”
AIDS · 2025-12-01 · Read on Hansard ↗
“…I will simply reflect on the fact that, when we debate mental health legislation, we are always trying to do three things: one is to update current thinking in legislative circles on what patients want and need; the second is to try to gently confront the sometimes conservative disposition of practitioners, by pushing…”
Mental Health Bill [HL] · 2025-03-31 · Read on Hansard ↗
“…the police have said that they are not the appropriate people to be first responders when somebody is having a mental health crisis and presenting a danger either to other people or to themselves.”
Mental Health Bill [HL] · 2025-03-31 · Read on Hansard ↗
“…to the organisations set out in these amendments, such as dentists, pharmacists, providers of care services and hospices, all of which are central to the Government’s other stated policy objective of improving health and of improving the health service and making it a community-based and more preventive service, thereb…”
National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill · 2025-02-25 · Read on Hansard ↗
“…est of us in her correspondence with the noble Earl? We are back to the same issue of the interface between the Mental Health Act and the Mental Capacity Act. We need to keep coming back to this to get more clarity on it, because nobody understands it now.”
Mental Health Bill [HL] · 2025-02-24 · Read on Hansard ↗
Contributions reproduced under the Open Parliament Licence.