Clause 16 - Powers to make decisions and appoint deputies: general
Mental Capacity Bill
3:30 pm
Mr Tim Boswell (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Daventry, Conservative)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam on having worked that point in at this stage. On previous occasions during our consideration of the Bill our minds have operated in parallel. That is not necessarily a misfortune, particularly when the result is a pincer movement on the Government that might require them to do something about a problem.
I too have been concerned about appointment—indeed, I tabled three questions on the subject for the Department for Work and Pensions. Two of them were answered on 16 September and the last on 19 October, and they have left me with growing concern. It is clear that that Department does not have full centralised knowledge of the number of people under the appointment system, because its answer related to the number of appointees for pension credit and income support alone. I can confirm that at 174,000 in the case of pension credit and 118,000 in that of income support, the figures appear to be rather larger than the hon. Gentleman suggested. However, a raft of other state benefits could be involved.
I got an answer to my question about the conditions for an appointee. They are interviewed and required to sign a declaration. The answer stated:
''If an appointee fails to meet their obligations, the Secretary of State may, in addition to any further action that might be appropriate, revoke the appointment.''—[Official Report, 16 September 2004; Vol. 424, c. 1749W.]
However, to the follow-up question, pursuant to the one that had just been answered answered, on the information relating to how many appointments had been revoked or subjected to further action, the Minister replied in the following terms:
''The information is not collated centrally and can be provided only at disproportionate cost.''—[Official Report, 19 October 2004; Vol. 425, c. 634W.]
That suggests a system that is not under consideration and that the Department does not have a handle on the situation.
I give notice to the Committee that I have tabled further amendments—although the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam will not have seen them yet and they do not exactly smite the eye in their transparency, because they are rather obliquely worded. They are about the operation of the appointment system. The
Department for Work and Pensions—and its predecessor Departments—which has operated that system for many years, since the inception of the national insurance legislation has not got central management of it. The criteria for its operation are quite inadequate. The nature of the appointments and the duties imposed—including the question whether best interests are invoked, for example—are not clear, and management and enforcement of the system is not very good. In no sense do I blame the Minister, or expect a full answer at this stage, but if we are in the business of meeting the needs of those who lack mental capacity, that problem should be worked out.
I should have added that the figures that I gave are the collective figures. The Department tells me that it cannot split the cases in which there is a mental capacity issue from other cases in which an appointment is made. We will not resolve the difficulty this afternoon, but I hope that the Minister will confer with his colleagues, and that a viable understanding or protocol is hammered out between the Departments before the Bill completes its passage through Parliament.