Clause 35 - Duty to seek advice in connection with serious medical treatment
Mental Capacity Bill
12:00 pm
Ms Rosie Winterton (Minister of State, Department of Health; Doncaster Central, Labour)
These are technical amendments designed to clarify the fact that the independent consultee should be consulted about serious medical treatment where practitioners are working in the independent sector and the treatment is funded and arranged by the NHS. This refers to the discussions that we have just had. The term ''NHS body'' will be defined in regulations and will include commissioning bodies.
The clause currently applies where an NHS body is proposing to provide serious medical treatment, which could be understood to exclude situations where an NHS body proposes to make arrangements for someone else to provide the treatment. If so, a commissioning NHS body would not be caught by the clause in the first place. I hope that that explains why we have tabled the amendments, and that the Committee will support them.
Amendment agreed to.