PART IIAdministrative Provisions and Provisions as to Treatment of Prisoners, etc.

Treatment of persons of unsound mind and mental defectives

64Removal of state mental patients, etc.

(1)The Secretary of State may—

(a)if he is satisfied that the attendance at any place in Great Britain of a state mental patient is desirable in the interests of justice or for the purposes of any public inquiry, direct him to be taken to that place;

(b)if he is satisfied that a state mental patient requires medical or surgical treatment which cannot be provided in the mental hospital in which he is required by law to be detained, direct him to be taken to a hospital or other suitable place for the purpose of the treatment,

and where any person is directed under this subsection to be taken to any place he shall, unless the Secretary of State otherwise directs, be kept in custody while being so taken, while at that place and while being taken back to the mental hospital in which he is required by law to be detained.

(2)The Secretary of State may, on the application of a state mental patient or a relation of the patient, order the patient's removal from a mental hospital in Scotland to a mental hospital in England; and any patient so removed shall be liable to be dealt with as if he had been sentenced or ordered to be detained or otherwise committed to custody, as the case may be, by a court in England.

(3)If, under any enactment extending to England, a Broadmoor patient is ordered to be removed from a mental hospital in England to a mental hospital in Scotland, he shall be liable to be dealt with as if he had been sentenced or ordered to be detained or otherwise committed to custody, as the case may be, by a court in Scotland.

(4)In this section any reference to a mental hospital shall include a reference to a State Mental Hospital and references to a State Mental Hospital and to a state mental patient shall, until the day appointed for the coming into operation of section sixty-three of this Act, respectively include references to the lunatic department of Perth Prison and to persons detained therein.