Mental Capacity (Duty to Assess)

Motion for leave to bring in a Bill (Standing Order No. 23)

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require persons discharging functions on behalf of certain other persons to assess the mental capacity of those persons in specified circumstances; and for connected purposes.

At issue is the devastating misuse of the Mental Capacity Act 2005, which has resulted in hundreds of preventable deaths. King’s College London found there were 160 of those deaths in 2023 alone.

The Bill is in honour of Christopher Laskaris, whose mum Fiona is here. Christopher was not unlike many autistic children; he was a sensitive and intelligent boy, who once asked his mum to stop on the way to school to rescue a lamb stuck in a fence. I first met Fiona when I was eight. I had stayed in my bedroom and ignored her, perhaps because I was angry that she was buying my home off my dad. My mum had died a few months after I was born, and I was a sensitive boy. Well, they moved in. Christopher grew up in my childhood bedroom, and he loved the house as much as I did.

As a young autistic man living alone in Leeds, Christopher was in danger. Despite Fiona raising credible doubts about his capacity on numerous occasions over eight years, she was never able to secure the mental capacity assessment that she needed to protect him. Horrifically, Christopher was exploited and murdered in his home by a man who had just been released from jail. Christopher was 24. Under this Bill, he would have been granted that mental capacity assessment, and he might still be with us.

I have been working with Fiona for over two years to close this loophole. We have worked on a cross-party basis, with the Government, and with ITV, which has mounted a national campaign to expose this injustice across the county. I am grateful for all of that and for the result: that the Government have committed to review and reform the Mental Capacity Act. This Bill offers an opportunity to realise that commitment.

The Mental Capacity Act states:

“A person must be assumed to have capacity unless it is established that he lacks capacity.”

Too often, public officials have used that presumption to not take action, failing vulnerable people, because if a person’s capacity is merely in doubt, but not yet established as lacking, then they are presumed to have capacity—and are too easily disregarded.

The Bill has been drafted by one of the most prominent mental capacity lawyers in the country, Alex Ruck Keene, honorary King’s counsel. It has two key clauses: a duty to assess capacity where a person is reasonably understood to have any impairment or disturbance in the functioning of their mind or brain; and a duty to assess capacity where a person properly interested in a person’s circumstances has raised a concern as to their capacity. Although those safeguards are in the existing code of practice, they are too often ignored. The Bill seeks to bring those existing safeguards into law in order to mandate compliance. It will enhance the presumption of capacity by ensuring that it is not used against people to their cost or to the cost of others.