THE OTHER DEPRESSING episode in the Com- mons on Friday
was the Government's reply to a question about the release of Peter Whitehead from Rampton. The Parliamentary Secretary con- trived to give the impression that Mr. Whitehead had been deservedly (though illegtilly) detained in Rampton; and that he was released the moment that the authorities were convinced he was sufficiently `stabilised.' This is untrue. The authorities did their worst, right up to the end, to prevent his release. The then Minister of Health, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, actually tried to stop it by describing Mr. Whitehead, only four months before his eventual release, as 'a weak, impulsive psychopath of inferior intelligence who was quite unfit to survive in society . . . capable of violence and a potential danger to himself and others.' The facts are that Mr. Whitehead should never have been put into Rampton; that he was unjustly, as well as illegally, detained there; and that the methods the Ministry of Health used to keep him there were by any standards shameful.
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