Mr Paul Burstow (Shadow Secretary of State for Health, Health; Sutton & Cheam, Liberal Democrat)

Clause 16 deals with the jurisdiction of the Court of Protection in respect of substitute decision making, and so on. In this group of amendments, I am attempting to address the part of the proxy decision-making system that will remain outside the scope of this measure—the appointee system operated by the Department for Work and Pensions, which at any time affects about 200,000 people who under the arrangements operated by the Department do not have the opportunity to make a decision themselves or to have a say in the choice of their appointee. Such decisions are made for them. That is against the spirit and the letter of the Bill.

The Bill provides an opportunity to regularise that position and to set a much clearer framework of safeguards around the way in which benefits are administered for those who lack capacity. It is rather puzzling that that issue has not been addressed in the context of the Bill. I put my hand up and admit that it is not a matter that I can recall the Joint Committee examining in any detail, but after its considerations, the matter caught the attention of those who are campaigning for this legislation to make its way on to the statute book.

There are undoubtedly concerns that there is considerable scope for the abuse of the system of appointees in respect of the benefits system. In future, there will be much more scope to abuse a person's financial resources that are provided by a benefit than their financial resources that come from other sources and are managed under LPAs. The amendment is designed to include those matters in the Bill's ambit.

Only last week, the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle), who is Minister with responsibility for disabled people, addressed the AGM of the all-party disability group. I had the opportunity to ask what her Department had done to review those matters and what discussions, to her knowledge, had taken place with the Department for Constitutional Affairs about them. To be fair to her, she said that she wanted to get back to us on that. I hope that we can get some clarity today about what discussions have taken place. It would be a missed opportunity not to ensure that the 200,000 people that are currently subject to the system that we are discussing are brought within the protections that the Bill will give them when it becomes an Act.

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