Schedule 6 - CSCI: supplementary
Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill
3:00 pm
Mr Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam, Liberal Democrat)
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell and to the Under-Secretary for clearly setting out the Government's position. [Interruption.] I deliberately conflated that. I just want to pick up on a couple of points that the Under-Secretary made. He talked about how one would go about defining a vulnerable adult. I simply draw his attention to section 86 of the Care Standards Act 2000. The Government seemed to have no difficulty in coming up with what was presumably then conceived by parliamentary counsel as a working definition. In respect of children's services there is now a means to ensure that the interests of the child are central to the work of the commission, which is, after all, under pressure from the providers—the subject of regulation in many respects. My concern is that there is a buttress, through regulations and statute, for the rights of children, but there is no similar buttress in respect of the rights of adults.
The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell rightly asked what groups of people we were talking about. He went on to talk about people with learning disabilities. I would add to that people who lack mental capacity. The Government have, for some years, been contemplating introducing mental
incapacity legislation. They have not yet done so. Such legislation is long overdue and would go some way to allay some of my anxieties about the absence of something within CSCI to deal with the issues. It is clear that we will not make progress on the matter today. This is a missed opportunity to establish parity of esteem and treatment in relation to the rights of adults who are vulnerable and lack capacity to make decisions for themselves and those of children, who the Minister is rightly concerned about and who similarly lack the ability to articulate their needs as clearly as we would wish. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Schedule 6, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 38 ordered to stand part of the Bill.