I only discovered yesterday that people receiving treatment for a MH condition are disqualified from Jury Service. Since then someone has mailed me with the following article from Society Guardian....

>>I have written in this column before about jury service and the fact that as someone receiving treatment for mental health problems I would be disqualified from serving. I might come to court as a victim of crime or be called as a witness, but in both situations my mental health history would almost certainly be used to discredit my evidence. And were I charged with a crime myself, called to stand trial before a jury, the one thing of which I could be certain is that none of those present would have shared my experience.Earlier this year, some months after the piece was published, I received a call from the head of campaigns at the mental health charity Rethink. It had been advised that the government was planning to consult on the issue this spring. A consultation document was being drawn up and a meeting was arranged with the official responsible for it. I was asked if I would like to attend the meeting.Rethink seeks actively to involve service users in every aspect of its work and it was in this capacity that I was introduced to "the man from the Ministry of Justice", an introduction that seemed to make him rather uncomfortable. Though I was sitting directly opposite him, he managed to avoid my gaze more or less completely for the first half-hour, leapfrogging,as it were, over my head to the Rethink employees sitting on either side. He also referred throughout the meeting to those with mental health problems as"the mentally disordered", a description that made me visibly wince everytime it emerged from his mouth. But as so often with stereotypes, they're fun while they last but like a holiday suntan, they tend to fade rather quickly. By the end of the meeting,not only had we achieved eye contact, but I even sensed a mutual respect. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that should I ever stand trial I'd be only too happy to have him on my jury and I'd like to think he felt the same way too.I was tempted to write about all this before, but we felt that the best way of getting things changed might in fact be to do it on the quiet, to try to slip through the changes before the bigots noticed. For once, the lack of interest in mental health issues might work in our favour. If certain sections of the press picked up on the story, one could just imagine the headlines: "Now nutters want right to send people to jail ..." Sleight of hand seemed a sounder approach.Most people probably aren't even aware that those with mental health problems - wherever they might stand in that enormous bracket - are barred from jury service. But in fact, according to figures from the Ministry for Justice, 750 people a month are disqualified from service on the grounds that they are receiving treatment for a mental health condition. That's 9,000 people being told each year that although they may be employed, pay tax and vote like anyone else, as far as jury service goes, their judgement is invalid. Spring came and went and ... nothing. Though the Ministry of Justice is still promising to hold a consultation "in the next few months", come June14, it will be four years since the government first promised to do so. The strategy of keeping quiet will only work if action is taken, otherwise it begins to feel rather like being fobbed off. I have been given no reason for the delay and can see no reason why, with genuine commitment, the process should take so long. This is a government,after all, that repeatedly insists that "those who can work, should work", a government determined to get a million people off incapacity benefit and into jobs, while at the same time telling them, and their employers, that those with mental health issues are incapable of exercising judgement. Could it be that fear of a media backlash is paralysing those with the power to overturn such blatant discrimination?