Mental Capacity (Amendment) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Chris Bryant and Dan Poulter

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 12th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Absolutely. One key thing that we saw repeatedly—this is an issue for the Bill, I think—was the fluctuating nature of some brain injuries. For instance, fatigue is a very common feature of many brain injuries. I do not mean just feeling tired because you are sitting at the back of a debate in the House of Commons and somebody is wittering on for far too long and you fall asleep, but real, genuine fatigue. I mean the kind of lassitude that leaves you unable to move from one side of the bed to the other. It is often misunderstood, because it might look like laziness to somebody with a judgmental eye. That lassitude can pass or go through phases and can sometimes be a bit difficult to explain or predict. I am therefore really keen that we ensure, in all the processes in the Bill, that anyone with an acquired brain injury is regularly and repeatedly reassessed so that they have an opportunity to escape. That is important.

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

The hon. Gentleman is making some good points. The only point I would make to him is that without a deprivation of liberty order—I agree that they should be open to review, and I am sure the Minister will go on to talk about how that can happen—some of the people he talks about may have to be put under the Mental Health Act 2007 due to the fluctuating nature of their capacity. That would be much more restrictive and could lead to them being sent to entirely the wrong places to be cared for. I would just give that caveat and that warning to him about the potential consequences of what he is saying.

[Chris Bryant]

I think the hon. Gentleman has just read, in some weird way, what I was about to say—he has a very special mental capacity of his own if he is able to read my notes from that distance. He is absolutely right, however, and I do not want to drive a coach and horses through the Bill at all. I fully accept that there is a requirement for some elements of it.

I have an anxiety about the pace at which the Bill is going. It is a shame that the code is not yet available, because it would significantly affect how we viewed some of the issues that we are talking about today. All the things in my amendments should probably be in the code, rather than on the face of the Bill—that is what the Minister said to me yesterday, and I should have given her a much harder time, by the way—but why do we not have the code now? We are not going to have it before the Bill receives its Third Reading, and I think that is a mistake. It is not as though we have lots of wonderful business to be getting through.