Mental health care human rights protection gap closed
From 6th April 2026, new human rights protections apply for people with mental health conditions. People receiving mental health after-care and treatment outsourced by the NHS to private care providers will be protected by the rights in the Human Rights Act.
Section 51 of the Mental Health Act 2025 states that private providers of mental health after-care services or mental health treatments arranged or paid for by the NHS will be treated as ‘public authorities’ under the Human Rights Act. This means that they must respect and protect people’s rights and can be held to account if this doesn’t happen.
This is an important change which closes a gap in the human rights protections available for people receiving care which developed from a legal case in 2024. The case was about the death of Paul Sammut, who was receiving mental health after-care in a private care home. Despite Paul’s care being arranged and paid for by the NHS and his local authority, the court decided that the care home was not carrying out a ‘public function’, so didn’t have a duty to protect Paul’s rights. We pushed for this loophole to be closed, alongside other organisations like the National Care Forum and the British Institute of Human Rights. We are pleased that the Government responded to our calls to close this protection gap.
We know from our work supporting older people needing care how vital human rights protections are across care and health services. Every day our national adviceline supports people to use their rights to push for decent care. The Human Rights Act covers important rights around life, freedom from degrading treatment, privacy, family life and liberty to ensure people are treated with dignity and respect.
This is an important development to give human rights protections for people receiving mental health care from private providers that is NHS funded or arranged. However, gaps in protections remain.
Where people are arranging and funding their own care, they currently do not have the same level of human rights protection. It is possible for people to be receiving care from the same provider, but due to differences in how their care was arranged or funded have different levels of legal protection. This is deeply unfair, creates unnecessary confusion and is a barrier for people to access their rights.
In Our Vision for Social Care we call for this gap to be closed in its entirety, by making sure that all health and care providers registered with the regulator must have a direct legal duty to respect rights under the Human Rights Act. Everyone deserves their rights to be protected in the same way when receiving care and support.