Guardianship (Missing Persons) Bill

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 6th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Keen of Elie) (Con)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, on introducing this Bill. The Bill is similar in content and purpose to the Missing Persons Guardianship Bill, which she introduced in June 2016. I am grateful to her for withdrawing her Bill and taking on the present Bill, which is supported by the Government. It will create a new legal status of guardian of the property and financial affairs of a missing person.

The proposals now in the Bill have taken some time to evolve and have been developed in the light of views expressed from several sources over time. First, the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Runaway and Missing Children and Adults called for legislation in 2011, and the Justice Select Committee recommended guardianship legislation in its Presumption of Death report in 2012. These calls were supported during the passage of the Bill that became the Presumption of Death Act 2013. This parliamentary activity was supplemented by a public consultation on proposals for a scheme of guardianship by the Ministry of Justice in 2014. The response to that consultation, as already indicated by the noble Baroness, was overwhelmingly supportive.

Before commenting on the content of the Bill that has emerged from this extended period of development, I too acknowledge the work of the campaigners within and outside Parliament for the introduction of this guardianship Bill. I will not detain your Lordships with a lengthy list but in addition to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, I would mention the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, who introduced a Bill in similar terms to that of her noble friend Lady Hamwee, and my noble friend Lord Boswell, who promoted a Presumption of Death Bill in 2009 that started the train of legislation that we carry forward today. I also acknowledge the work of the Justice Committee in the other place and, outside Parliament, the campaigning of the charity Missing People, along with the help that it and we have received from Clifford Chance LLP in acting as pro bono lawyers to that charity.

Missing People and the charities Hostage UK and Prisoners Abroad, which have also supported the preparation of the Bill, bring together and give voice to the experiences of the individuals and families caught up in disappearances, as referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. I am grateful to all those who have contributed to their work and in particular to Claudia Lawrence’s father, Peter Lawrence, who I understand is here. He has campaigned to create a practical legal remedy for the benefit of all people caught up in the property and financial effects of disappearances.

I now turn briefly to the substance of the Bill. The Bill is necessary because, although the law assumes that a missing person is alive until the contrary is proved, the missing person’s property is effectively left ownerless while he or she is missing. No one has legal authority to protect it or to use it on their behalf. This can lead to practical and financial problems for the missing person, his or her family and others.

At present, people simply have to find ways to get by. Unlike situations where it is thought the missing person has died, there is no legal framework to assist the individuals caught up in the difficult consequences of a disappearance. The experiences of those left behind demonstrate that there is a gap in the law and that suitable advice is difficult to find. Families may be hit hardest, but banks and other institutions have to deal with cases of disappearance on an ad hoc basis, increasing uncertainty and risk.

Other approaches to reform would have been possible, but the creation of a new status of guardian of the property and affairs of a missing person is intended to fill the gap in the law in a way that will provide an accessible and readily understandable legal solution, while still protecting the interests of the missing person.

The first and foremost protection is that guardians will be appointed only by the court. The court must be satisfied that the person to be appointed is suitable to act as guardian and will act in the best interests of the missing person. The court will be either the High Court or the Court of Protection, and the Lord Chancellor will make this choice after consulting the Lord Chief Justice. The court will be able to impose conditions and restrictions in the terms of the appointment, including restricting the length of the appointment to less than the maximum four years permitted by the Bill. The court also has power to vary and revoke appointments.

The Bill also provides that interested parties will be able to hold guardians to account by court action and that guardians will be supervised by the Office of the Public Guardian, which will maintain a register of appointments and deal with complaints about the way a guardian is exercising his or her authority.

In this last respect and in a number of other places, the proposals in the Bill broadly follow the model of the provisions governing the appointment of deputies in the Mental Capacity Act 2005. The guardian will, for example, be the agent of the missing person, in much the same way as the deputy is the agent of the patient under the Mental Capacity Act 2005. Third parties, such as banks and other financial institutions, will be protected in their dealings with guardians in much the same way as they are when they deal with people acting under powers of attorney. Most importantly, they will be able to see the extent of the guardian’s authority to act on the face of the guardianship order made by the court and will be able to rely on it.

Some of the detail of the scheme of guardianship will be set out in rules of court, regulations and statutory guidance. To allow these to be drawn up and for potential users to familiarise themselves with them, the Bill is unlikely to come into force earlier than one year after Royal Assent, but the Government will endeavour to keep any delay to an absolute minimum.

The Government are committed to helping those left behind by the traumatic and disruptive event that is the disappearance of a family member. The number of cases in which the remedy will be used may not be huge, but the effect of each of those disappearances on those caught up in them can be severe and traumatic. The creation of the new legal status of guardian of the property and financial affairs of a missing person will not solve every problem created by a disappearance, but it should provide an effective, practical and relatively straightforward remedy to some at least of the practical problems that are created in these circumstances. There is, of course, concern about the risk of abuse of authority that can never be completely eliminated, but the Government believe that the provisions in the Bill strike an appropriate balance between giving the guardian the freedom to act to do good on the one hand and protecting the interests of the missing person on the other.

I commend the Bill to the House.