Planned reform of mental health services will cause too many people to be locked up as a risk to the public even if they have done nothing wrong, MPs and peers warned today.

The joint committee on the Draft Mental Health Bill called for the parts of the proposed legislation that deal with preventive detention to be rewritten before the Bill is placed before Parliament.

The proposals places too great an emphasis on protecting the public from potential risks from a small minority of dangerous people suffering from personality disorders like psychopathy, at the expense of the civil rights of others with mental illnesses who pose no risk to others, it said.

While accepting the need for a broader definition of mental disorder, the committee said there was a danger that the Bill could be used as a means of social control.

Lord Carlile of Berriew, the committee's chairman, said the "fundamentally flawed" draft legislation pandered to public misconceptions about violence and mental illness, and failed to protect patients' rights.

"Far too many people could be forced into treatment unnecessarily. They can be detained even though the treatment they receive does not help their condition and they can be detained compulsorily even if they are perfectly capable of making their own decisions," he said.

"This is well beyond what is required and the committee believes that ministers should consider redrafting significant sections of the Bill."

Lord Carlile said that it was virtually impossible to predict whether a patient with a personality disorder might harm other people.

His committee had examined volumes of evidence on cases and had concluded "that there was no reliable evidence to show that anyone can predict those terrible outcomes".

"We fear that an awful lot of people could be locked up in psychiatric hospitals who pose no significant risk of harming others," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

The parliamentary committee concluded that the Government should not "warehouse" people with personality disorders simply because the public was frightened of them, Lord Carlile said.

"Compulsory mental health treatment must be of therapeutic benefit. We fear the risk of mental health ASBOs, or a kind of concentration camp mentality."

Rosie Winterton, the health minister, said the Government wanted to increase safeguards for the "small number" of people detained because they posed a risk to themselves or others.

However, she said there was a balance to strike with public protection issues.

"The problem we have with the current Bill is that people who have a personality disorder and may be a very serious risk to others or to themselves may be considered untreatable," she told Today.

Ms Winterton was concerned that patients with a dual diagnosis - who suffered from drug dependency or were paedophiles as well as having a personality disorder - might be excluded from receiving any treatment because of their personality disorder.

"What this Bill does is to update the legislation so that where people have not been able to receive treatment...what this does is to provide that treatment for them and to say yes, there is an ability (to detain people). But they have to fulfil five very strict conditions and they have to be approved by an independent mental health tribunal."

Paul Farmer, the chairman of the Mental Health Alliance, which represents the 50 largest mental health groups, said the government should withdraw the Bill and draft a new version based on the committee's recommendations. "The committee has clearly listened to service users, carers, professionals and charities," he said.

The committee concluded that:

• People should only be forced into compulsory treatment if they pose a significant risk of serious harm to others;
• Patients should never be treated under compulsion unless their decision-making is impaired;
• The compulsory treatment must be of therapeutic benefit to them.

The MPs and peers also have major concerns about lack of resources to implement the Bill. Without adequate staffing and funding, they say the new tribunal will fail to improve patient safeguards, and mental health will remain the Cinderella service of the NHS.

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