Clause 30 - Research
Mental Capacity Bill
5:00 pm
Mr Tim Boswell (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Daventry, Conservative)
I thank the Minister for giving an extended response. She has sought to give explanations and assurances that are helpful to the Committee. We will need to go away, look at the record carefully and reflect on the issue.
My personal reservations have not been entirely allayed. My first reservation involves safeguards. Nobody wants a bureaucratic or complex system that cannot respond to a particular situation. It is equally important, given the sensitivity of the subject,
which has been accepted on both sides of the Committee, to ensure that safeguards are sufficient.
My second reservation involves the principle. I note that the Minister did not specifically respond on whether the best interest test covers this clause, save only by extending the context to the widest possible interpretation of best interest, which is the response I anticipated. I want to reflect on that. In effect, she was saying that if it might do some good either to P or to somebody else with P's condition, this is in P's best interests or is certainly not inimical to them.
I understand that approach. It would be objectionable in principle to exclude best interests from the clause, so we must consider whether this is a legitimate way to deal with the problem. I suspect that it will inevitably end up being tested in court, or possibly in the European Court.
Rather than exercising our right to vote on the matter, we will go away, reflect and consider whether we wish to return to it. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 30 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Further consideration adjourned.—[Ms Bridget Prentice.]
Adjourned accordingly at fifteen minutes past Five o'clock till Tuesday 2 November at half-past Nine o'clock.