The treatment of the mentally ill that shames us all

Today psychiatrists attack the draft Mental Health Bill as 'morally indefensible and ethically corrupt'. For three weeks the IoS has campaigned on mental health issues, and we share their revulsion at plans for detention without trial and forcible injections. Britain's mentally ill have a right to be heard. We will give them a voice

The Government's Bill to lock up the mentally ill before they have committed any offence is condemned today by the professional body which will have to implement it as "ethically corrupt" and "morally indefensible".

The attack by the Royal College of Psychiatrists – one of the most extreme by a professional body against government policy since Tony Blair came to power – is reinforced by the Law Society, Labour MPs and opposition parties.

A powerful alliance of cross-party and professional opposition was last night forming behind the campaign led by The Independent on Sunday for justice for the mentally ill who are being denied their civil liberties in some of Britain's most high-security mental institutions.

The draft Mental Health Bill published last week by Alan Milburn, Secretary of State for Health, will close a loophole that let Michael Stone go free before murdering Lin Russell and her six-year-old daughter Megan, even though he had been diagnosed with a dangerous personality disorder.

It will require mentally disordered people to submit to compulsory treatment, but critics believe it will force psychiatrists to act as police, locking up people before they have committed crimes.

Controversy over the treatment of the dangerously mentally ill was fuelled this weekend by the disclosure that a man who attacked 11 churchgoers with a samurai sword had been released into the community from a high-security mental hospital after just 21 months.

Under the new Bill, such patients could be forced to undergo treatment against their wishes even when released into the community. Those with dangerous personality disorder could be detain indefinitely, even though they had committed no offence.

The Government faces a possible Labour rebellion unless it backs down over the most contentious parts of the bill. David Hinchliffe, the Labour chairman of the Commons select committee on health, told the IoS he could not vote for the Bill unless it were amended.

Liam Fox, the Tory spokesman on health, said the Opposition would vote against the Bill as currently drafted. "We are deeply concerned about the powers over the rights of patients who have committed no offence."

Warning that it will shame our society, Dr Tony Zigmond, a spokesman for the Royal College, said: "It was driven entirely by the Home Office. It came out of the Michael Stone and Christopher Clunis cases. If you have an argumentative son who drinks too much and gets stroppy, he could be detained under these proposals. We think it is morally indefensible and ethically corrupt."

He compares the measures to the discredited internment powers in Northern Ireland in an article today in the IoS. And he warned that some psychiatrists would not co-operate with the Government if the legislation reaches the statute book in its present form. He said: "We do not believe psychiatrists should be used as agents of social control."

Alan Franey, the former chief executive of Broadmoor, yesterday branded the proposals "harmful" and a "breach of human rights". Professor John Gunn, chairman of the faculty of forensic psychiatry, who runs a clinic at Broadmoor, condemned them as "unworkable".