BULLY for Judge Ian Webster - for applying some good old-fashioned common sense to the problem of the shortage of hospital beds for the mentally ill.

Up before him at Burnley Crown Court, on a string of charges involving burglary and theft, was a man whom three top psychiatrists warned should not be released into society.

But, because he needed long-term treatment, there was a difficulty in finding him a bed.

That was clearly an unacceptable situation for the judge.

For, he said, if the defendant was released, he would get straight back into trouble.

What he might also have added was that he would have racked up more victims too.

Yet how often, in similar circumstances, have the authorities failed both the mentally ill and society by ducking their responsibilities and freeing troublesome mental patients, and even murderous lunatics, into the community for lack of proper or secure accommodation for them?

Too often, alas, as a string of avoidable tragedies have shown.

Wisely, Judge Webster was not going down that road.

The situation was simply not good enough, he said..

And he demanded that a hospital bed must be made available for the man.

And if, by the next day, there was still not one to be had, he wanted the chief executive of the East Lancashire health authority up before him to explain why not.

Good for him.

But the pity is that, though the judge's commonsense use of his powers and influence might have produced the right outcome in this case, it is, alas, a one-off.

Daily, this mismatch of provision of accommodation for the mentally ill - blurred by a flawed care-in-the-community policy that has done away with too many beds anyway - and the demand for it, is creating the kind of difficulties Judge Webster sought to cut a swathe through in court yesterday.

And, moreover, is is creating unnecessary trouble and victims in the community.

Perhaps, then, in the dock should be the government for presiding over this failure-riddled policy and the over zealous run-down of our mental hospitals.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.