Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [Lords]

Barbara Keeley Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Tuesday 18th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “That” to the end of the Question and add:

“this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill, notwithstanding the need for reform to the current system of mental capacity assessments and while acknowledging the improvements made to the Bill by the House of Lords, because the Bill underwent no pre-legislative scrutiny, it does not put the interests of the cared-for person at the heart of the Bill, it enshrines a conflict of interest in relation to independent providers of health and care services, it fails to provide measures to reduce the substantial backlog of Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards Assessments and it fails to recognise explicitly the interface with the Mental Health Act when determining which legislation should be used to authorise care or treatment arrangements.”

The issue before the House today is one of fundamental importance to us all: the individual liberty of vulnerable people. Today, we are being asked under which conditions it is right to deprive vulnerable people of that liberty when they need care and treatment and cannot give their consent, and what protections should be in place when their liberty is taken away.

The proposals in the Bill to replace deprivation of liberty safeguards have the scope to affect the rights of a large portion of the 2 million people in the UK thought to lack capacity to make their own decisions. Among them are people with dementia, learning disabilities, autism and brain injuries. Whether to deprive some of the most vulnerable people in this country of their liberty should be an issue that we treat with the utmost respect, thought and care. However, I am afraid the Government’s approach to this immensely important issue has shown few of those qualities.

The reform of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 requires methodical planning, but the truth is that the Bill has been rushed through without proper scrutiny, despite the best efforts of many people who are concerned about its contents and have been working to change it for the better. The fact that the Bill has less than two hours for Second Reading and was brought forward with just two sitting days’ notice speaks volumes of the speed that the Government are adopting in respect of the Bill, and will raise further concerns among those who care about these matters.

The process of reforming the 2005 Act began when the Law Commission produced a draft framework for new liberty protection safeguards to replace the existing deprivation of liberty safeguards. That came after two years of painstaking work and wide consultation ended last year. The Government accepted the commission’s proposals at the time they were produced, but the Bill that was introduced to the House of Lords has diverged substantially from the original recommendations— an issue on which the Secretary of State answered a question earlier. At the outset of the process, the draft Bill published by the Government was subject to no prelegislative scrutiny whatsoever, meaning that important stakeholders were not consulted about its contents.

During the Bill’s passage through the House of Lords, my colleagues and I heard many concerns about it from interested stakeholders, from charities representing people with dementia, learning disabilities and autistic people through to directors of adult social services, organisations representing social workers, and social work professionals involved with the current system. They have been unanimous in their agreement that the Bill is deeply flawed, that there has not been adequate time for consultation, and that the proposals in the Bill could cause more problems than they solve.

The Secretary of State quoted a smattering of organisations; let me read him this list: the Relatives & Residents Association, Mencap, the National Autistic Society, Mind, Rethink, the Alzheimer’s Society, VoiceAbility, Disability Rights UK, POhWER, the British Institute of Human Rights, Sense, Liberty, Learning Disability England and Inclusion London have all called for the Bill to be paused so that further consultation can take place. But as we can see today, that call has not been heeded.

[Mr Dhesi]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, given that Sir Simon Wessely’s review has only just been published, the Government should consider pausing the Bill to look into the interplay between it and the recommendations on the Mental Health Act? Otherwise, we risk creating legislation that fits together very poorly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barbara Keeley]

Absolutely, we do, and that is a real concern. The Opposition’s concern is that we do not want to end up with a flawed piece of legislation replacing another flawed piece of legislation, and then to have to change it again.

It is worth noting that until yesterday the Government had not even published an equality impact assessment, more than five months after the draft Bill was first presented. Before that, the Government’s only published impact assessment was concerned solely with the cost savings that the new system would bring. That initial impact assessment is now woefully out of date, given the number of amendments made to the Bill in the House of Lords—I understand that more than 300 amendment were tabled. I pay tribute to the work of many peers in the House of Lords, including my colleagues on the Labour Front Bench, who worked to try to improve the Bill, despite the hurdles placed in front of them by the Government. Nevertheless, fundamental problems with the Bill remain that simply cannot be rectified by amendments.

We cannot support the Bill in its current form because, quite simply, it proposes to replace one deeply flawed system with another. I will come onto the flaws in the Bill in due course, but, first, I wish to address the need for substantial reform of the Mental Capacity Act, which we accept. We recognise that the deprivation of liberty safeguards system is deeply complex and bureaucratic, as the Law Commission identified in its report last year. Concerns about the deprivation of liberty safeguards predated even the Law Commission’s report, and we know that a House of Lords Committee declared the DoLS not fit for purpose in 2014.

The scope of DoLS is too narrow, applying only in care homes and hospitals. Authorisations outside care homes and hospitals have to be done through the Court of Protection, which is costly and cumbersome. It is clear, as we have already heard in this debate, that the explosion in the number of DoLS applications after the Cheshire West judgment left the system struggling to cope. The latest figures, as the Secretary of State has said, show a backlog of 125,000 applications. That, of course, leaves the person subject to the application potentially unlawfully deprived of their liberty. If the Government want to resolve that backlog, as they profess to, then the way to do it is to provide local authorities with the resources they need to process all the applications they receive. The Government should not be trying to hide their failure to fund local government behind a streamlined process that does not protect vulnerable people.

Although the deprivation of liberty safeguards need reform, and I agree that they do, the Bill deals with none of the challenges that have been outlined and creates some new problems that cannot be solved simply with further amendments. I am afraid we feel that the Government cannot be relied on to make the necessary changes during the remaining legislative stages given the resistance that they showed to making important changes in the House of Lords. On the contrary, the transformative spirit of the Law Commission’s draft Bill has been squashed, and the measures that would place the best interests of the cared-for person at the heart of the new system have been reduced.

The Government should have enacted the Law Commission’s proposals in full through the 15-clause Bill that was drafted, but instead we have this five-clause Bill. Why did they not simply bring forward the Law Commission’s proposals? The inescapable conclusion that we have come to from reading the Bill is that the Government are more interested in cost saving than in the best interests of cared-for people. This is a crucial point, because there can be disastrous consequences when the best interests of cared-for people are not taken into consideration.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

I say this in a spirit of co-operation on such an important issue. The Labour party amendment is to decline to give the Bill a Second Reading. Instead of trying to change the Bill and bring in some of the Law Commission’s recommendations, why, with nearly 200,000 people waiting to have a DoLS assessment, have the Opposition proposed an amendment to reject the Bill out of hand?

[Barbara Keeley]

That is a question that the hon. Lady needs to put to her own party. What has happened up to this point is that the Government have been asked repeatedly to pause, to carry out more consultation, and to consider redrafting the Bill. There is a list of 40 organisations that have asked for a pause and a redrafting of the Bill. This is a familiar situation from health and social care legislation—it has happened before in this House. The Government could have considered a pause, and the Minister for Care, the hon. Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage), knows that I have discussed that with her. The whole question really falls back on the Government.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend refers to what happened in 2012 with the Health and Social Care Bill. We had to have a pause halfway through its parliamentary stages because it had not been thought through properly. I worry that we might end up having the same thing happen again if the Government do not take heed of what the shadow Minister is so clearly setting out.

[Barbara Keeley]

I thank my hon. Friend for saying that, and it is the case.

Let me give an example. Just last week, the BBC’s “Victoria Derbyshire” programme exposed the horrific case of Rachel Johnston, a woman with learning disabilities who died after having an operation to remove all of her teeth. Rachel had a long-standing and extensive dental problem, but, clearly, could not consent to the dental work. Rather than doing the surgery in several treatments, the dentist opted to remove all her teeth in one operation, using the Mental Capacity Act to authorise the use of a general anaesthetic because he deemed it to be in her best interest. After being discharged, Rachel bled profusely from her gums, developed breathing difficulties and later died. How on earth can that treatment have been in her best interest? That case shows a need for greater safeguards, not fewer safeguards. We should not allow medical professionals to make decisions without considering the best interests or wishes of people who lack the capacity to consent to treatment.

I recognise that, as the Secretary of State mentioned, the Government conceded in the House of Lords that the cared-for person must be consulted, but there are still worrying aspects of the Bill that undermine that principle. We should ensure that individuals have access to an independent advocate. That is a vital safeguard that allows people to challenge authorisations, and it should be the default. The manner in which the independent mental capacity advocates can and should be appointed remains ill-defined and even contradictory.

The Minister in the House of Lords, Lord O’Shaughnessy, seems to have dismissed concerns raised about the application of a best interest test before the appointment of an advocate. The role of an advocate is essential to allowing individuals to access appeals and review their rights. Access to support from advocates should not depend on best interest tests, and the provisions in the Bill are far weaker than those proposed by the Law Commission. Yet despite that being pointed out in the debate in the House of Lords, the Minister there seemed unwilling to listen to advice, merely saying that it would work “in practice”. That is simply not good enough. These factors amount to a severe undermining of the concept of the individual’s best interests, which should be at the heart of the Bill but is sorely lacking.

I will now address the backlog of deprivation of liberty safeguard applications, because at the outset the Government presented the Bill as a cost-effective way of reducing it. On Second Reading in the House of Lords, the Minister claimed that the Bill would relieve

“local authorities of the…legal liability burden of more than £408 million by removing the backlog of…applications.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 16 July 2018; Vol. 792, c. 1060.]

But he made no mention of how that would happen. Our conclusion is that by attempting to place the onus for assessments on care home managers, the Bill would remove the responsibility from cash-strapped local authorities.

The Government initially tried to pass responsibility for assessments on to care home managers, and that was clearly intended as a cost-cutting measure. That was amended in the House of Lords, but care home managers will still decide whether an assessment needs to take place and will also identify whether the person being cared for objects to a liberty protection safeguard for their own care and treatment. The British Association of Social Workers has said that this presents a potential conflict of interest for care homes, as they need to maintain occupancy and may not readily identify an objection by the cared-for person.

The BASW has a further concern about the grounds on which the responsible body would decide whether it or the care home manager would make the necessary arrangements for an LPS authorisation. There is a significant risk of a two-tier system, whereby local authorities under financial or waiting list pressures would default to care home managers completing the new duties, and other local authorities under less strain would do the assessments themselves. I think we have enough of a postcode lottery in care without adding to it through the Bill.

Care England, which represents the network of care providers, says:

“There is a lack of clarity about the role of the Care Home Manager...the separation of roles between care homes and community care provision seems designed to increase rather than reduce confusion and complexity.”

Indeed, the body is so concerned by this Bill that is has also said:

“This ill-considered Bill risks storing up a range of problems of a kind that we do not want and should be slowed or returned for redrafting.”

There remains a further dangerous conflict of interest at the heart of the Bill because of the role that independent hospitals are given in the assessment process. Despite debate in the House of Lords regarding the role of independent hospitals, under the Bill they would still be allowed to appoint their own approved mental capacity professionals. That would allow independent hospitals the responsibility to authorise deprivation of liberty for people in that same hospital for the assessment and treatment of mental disorders. That is plainly wrong.

[Matt Hancock]

indicated dissent.

[Barbara Keeley]

The Minister says no, but Lord O’Shaughnessy in the House of Lords would not consider amendments tabled by two parties to deal with that issue. It is plainly wrong and represents a very clear conflict of interest.

Moreover, the Bill currently allows for the deprivation of someone’s liberty to be authorised for up to three years without review after two initial periods of 12 months, as the Secretary of State said earlier. It cannot be right to have that period of three years without renewal. The Bill is reducing the protections afforded by the current DoLS system, which operates a maximum period of 12 months before renewal.

[Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is outlining, with some good reason, the fact that there may be fewer safeguards and fewer opportunities for people to review or appeal under this Bill than when someone is sectioned under the Mental Health Act. She has a point about the need to look into that point, and to look more broadly at how this Bill sits alongside the Mental Health Act, given Simon Wessely’s review. Does she agree that a pause would be helpful to consider the interface of those pieces of legislation?

[Barbara Keeley]

Very much so. I will come on to that shortly, but I will not leave the point about independent hospitals, because it is important.

We know only too well from media reports, and the Secretary of State does too, of the torrid situation in independent hospitals that detain people with autism and learning disabilities under the Mental Health Act, and the measures in this Bill could have disastrous and far-reaching consequences. I have raised at the Dispatch Box on several occasions the appalling treatment of people with autism and learning disabilities in assessment and treatment units. I have described the situation as amounting to a national scandal, and I believe that it is still so. As many as 20% of people in these units have been there for more than 10 years. The average stay is five and a half years. The average cost of a placement in an assessment and treatment unit for people with a learning disability is £3,500 a week, but the costs can be as high as £13,000 a week or more.

As the journalist Ian Birrell has exposed in The Mail on Sunday, private sector companies are making enormous profits from admitting people to those units and keeping them there for long periods. Two giant US healthcare companies, a global private equity group, a Guernsey-based hedge fund, two British firms and a major charity are among the beneficiaries of what campaigners have seen as patients being seen as cash cows to be milked by a flawed system at the expense of taxpayers. According to a written answer I obtained from the Department of Health and Social Care, in the past year alone the NHS has paid out over £100 million to private companies for these placements. Shamefully, the Government cannot reveal how much they have spent since they came to power, because they claim that they did not record the expenditure before 2017. It cannot be right that the Bill potentially gives private companies the power to lock up vulnerable people for years at a time to feed a lucrative and expanding private health sector.

I would like to draw attention to one more issue that the Bill does not address—we have already discussed it—and that cannot be papered over by amendments. The Government commissioned Professor Sir Simon Wessely to lead a review of the Mental Health Act, which is of course long overdue for reform. However, as the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) said, there is clearly a complex interface between the Mental Capacity Act and the Mental Health Act. Professor Sir Simon Wessely has made the point that there is now a worrying trend of people, particularly with dementia, being detained under the Mental Health Act when their deprivation of liberty should be dealt with under the Mental Capacity Act. His review recommended imposing a new line of objection to determine who should be treated under which legislation, but, as the hon. Gentleman said, there has been no engagement with these recommendations, which were finalised as this Bill was going through the House of Lords.

In our view, the Government must commit to a review of the interface between the two Acts, with full consultation, which has, to date, been sorely lacking. It is one thing to say that Sir Simon had a conversation with the Secretary of State about this, but that is not full consultation. The consultation must look at both hospital and community settings and provide clear and accessible rights of appeal.

[Matt Hancock]

Of course the interface between the Mental Capacity Act and the Mental Health Act will be considered, but Sir Simon himself favours bringing forth the Mental Capacity Act renewal now and then dealing with the Mental Health Act later. As with all of the hon. Lady’s other considerations, that has been taken into account, and this is the best way forward.

[Barbara Keeley]

Well, clearly we do not agree.

The reform of the Mental Capacity Act began as an attempt in good faith to reform a flawed piece of legislation that fails to protect the human rights of some of the most vulnerable people in this country, but it now threatens to infringe those rights further through this Bill. We simply cannot afford to rush an issue of this magnitude where individual liberties and human rights are at stake. Indeed, the Minister in the House of Lords himself admitted:

“We cannot introduce another Bill or piece of legislation that just creates a problem three years down the line.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 16 July 2018; Vol. 792, c. 1110.]

But that is exactly what this Government are trying to do today. We will fail some of the most vulnerable people in society if we allow the creation of flawed legislation that needs to be replaced in just a few years. We must get this right. That is why the Government must pause the Bill, and why I urge hon. Members to vote for our reasoned amendment and ensure that Ministers get the message loud and clear.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Norman Lamb (North Norfolk) (LD)]

I want to start by reinforcing the point that the Bill deals with an issue of profound importance: the deprivation of a citizen’s liberty and the circumstances in which that can be done. That is why it is so vital that the measures are properly and closely examined and scrutinised. This is particularly important when dealing with people who potentially cannot object to the deprivation of their liberty. There is a real need for robust safeguards to be in place to ensure the least restrictive care possible in all cases and to restrict liberty only if that is genuinely in the best interests of that individual.

The system that the Bill seeks to reform is clearly not fit for purpose. The Joint Committee on Human Rights reached that clear conclusion. After the Cheshire West ruling, which actually happened during the period when I was a Minister, we have seen the development of a massive backlog, in particular because of the broadening of the definition of what constitutes the deprivation of liberty. It is therefore imperative that we sort that out. If we think about it, here and now we are routinely flouting people’s human rights. All those people on the backlog waiting list are being deprived of their liberty without proper authorisation. That is intolerable and it is why I resist the idea that we should just stop this process and leave in place the current wholly imperfect system.

When we think about reform, it is vital that we replace a flawed bureaucratic system with an effective robust system with proper safeguards, not another flawed system. It is very important to recognise what turned up in the House of Lords. My colleague Baroness Barker commented:

“This is one of the worst pieces of legislation ever brought before this House.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 11 December 2018; Vol. 794, c. 1247.]

That was the view of many peers when the Bill first appeared in the House. I pay tribute to peers on all sides. I know my Liberal Democrat team did an incredible amount of work, but they worked with Labour colleagues and, I should say, the Minister Lord O'Shaughnessy. He collaborated with peers on all sides to improve the proposed legislation.

[Barbara Keeley]

The comment from Baroness Barker, who did some great work in the House of Lords, was made on Third Reading; she still described it then as one of the “worst pieces of legislation” that they had seen in the House of Lords.