Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the implications for the rights of disabled people of the recent Supreme Court ruling concerning the assessment of deprivation of liberty.

The Department’s priority is to safeguard vulnerable people and ensure their rights are protected. We are considering the Supreme Court’s judgment carefully, which sets out the factors to be applied when determining whether a person is deprived of their liberty within the meaning of Article 5(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights.

We remain committed to protecting the rights of disabled people. The judgment does not remove the need for robust safeguards where Article 5 is engaged, and existing legal frameworks, including the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards, the Mental Capacity Act 2005, and the Care Act 2014, continue to provide protections.

The Department published an update to the health and care sector on the implications of the judgment on 15 June 2026 and will publish additional interim guidance shortly. We are working with a range of stakeholder partners and charities to develop this guidance. It will include practical case studies to help people understand how they should apply the judgment to their work.