Clarkson hits back at Miliband

BBC Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson has criticised Labour leader Ed Miliband for singling him out in a speech about attitudes to mental health:

In a speech earlier today, Ed Miliband said:

"Jeremy Clarkson, who may have at least acknowledged the tragedy of people who end their own lives, goes on to call them "Johnny Suicides" whose bodies should be left on train tracks rather than delay journeys.

"It is attitudes like these that reinforce the stigma that blights millions of people's lives, and holds our country back."

The Labour Party has not yet issued a response to Mr Clarkson's tweets.

TV presenter Fiona Phillips says the more people who undersand mental health problems the better it will be for employers, employees and "society at large".

The Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said emergency legislation would be hurried through Parliament to deal with the scandal, which he learned about last week.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said there were "irregularities" in the way doctors were approved before they could assess if patients should be detained under the 1983 Mental Health Act.

He told the Commons: "Our latest best estimate is that 2,000 doctors were not properly approved and that they have participated in the detention of between 4,000 and 5,000 current patients within institutions in both the NHS and independent sectors."

Mr Hunt said four of England's Strategic Health Authorities were affected, with some patients sent to Ashworth and Rampton high security hospitals, home to some of the country's most notorious inmates.

Up to 5,000 mental health patients may have been sectioned over the last 10 years by doctors who had not been properly approved, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said.

The Labour leader Ed Miliband has said that Britain must break the taboo surrounding mental health which he says runs across our society and "infects both our culture and our politics".

The Labour leader Ed Miliband has given a speech on tackling the issue of mental health in the 21st century.

He said it is a taboo which must be broken if we are to rebuild Britain as one nation.

Read the full-text of his speech at the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Ed Miliband is expected to announce the creation of a taskforce headed by the chair of Barts NHS Trust, Stephen O'Brien, to draw up a strategic plan for mental health in society, at a speech in London today.

He will also promise to rewrite the NHS constitution to give patients the same legal right to therapies for treating mental illness as they already have to drugs and treatments for physical illness.

In a speech on tackling the issue of mental health in the 21st century, the Labour leader Ed Miliband will reprise the One Nation theme of his successful conference speech.

During Ed Miliband's speech on mental health today, he will criticise writers and TV personalities Jeremy Clarkson and Janet Street-Porter for articles which he claims insulted and belittled people with mental illness and contributed to a national taboo on the issue.

"There are still people who abuse the privilege of their celebrity to insult, demean and belittle others, such as when Janet Street-Porter says that depression is 'the latest must-have accessory' promoted by the 'misery movement'", Mr Miliband will say.

The Labour leader will also say: "Jeremy Clarkson at least acknowledges the tragedy of people who end their own life but then goes on to dismiss them as 'Johnny Suicides' whose bodies should be left on train tracks rather than delay journeys."