The Mental Capacity Bill
Doug Naysmith MP’s Letter from Westminster for the Observer, North Bristol and South Gloucestershire Editions
By the time you read this I expect to have voted for the Second Reading of the Mental Capacity Bill. This will disappoint those of you who have written to tell me of your concerns about the bill, but it will please many others. Forty well-known charities and voluntary organisations support it and people have been lobbying for it for years. The bill’s purpose is to protect and empower vulnerable people - by setting out in law what we expect to happen when someone lacks or may lack the mental capacity to make decisions about their health and social care. It will help people to make decisions for themselves when they can, and arrange for decisions to be made for them, in line with their known wishes, when they cannot. There has been some concern that the bill could pave the way for euthanasia, but I am quite convinced that this is not so. A draft bill was published last year and, after consultation, it was improved. Now the bill specifically says that nothing in it permits or changes the law relating to euthanasia or assisted suicide.
The bill will provide people with the opportunity to express their wishes before they become incapable of making decisions. It sets out a clear basis for assessing whether someone cannot take a particular decision at a particular time. It also seeks to ensure that everything done for the person who cannot make their own decisions, must be in that person’s best interests. In addition, the Bill introduces a new criminal offence of ill treatment or neglect of a person who lacks capacity. This, I believe, offers protection from ‘euthanasia by neglect’.
The Second Reading of any Bill is the time when MPs vote whether they are broadly in favour of it or not. We may have some objections, but we know that we will get the chance to make changes. In the weeks ahead I shall be involved in discussions about how to improve the bill still further, and I the views I have heard from constituents will help me to do that.
