Mental Health Bill [HL]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness. The amendments take us back to our previous discussion about the ability of those representing the individual to access the quality of information and advocacy support that, I indicated, we need to think about, not in the context of the Bill but to level up the playing field more generally. We recognise the importance of the role that independent mental capacity advocates will play and the critical nature of family members or carers. They can be independent of the care home or the hospital where the individual is being looked after. We do not want to appoint where there is clearly somebody who is able to act in support of the individual. We do not want family members or carers to feel that their role and function is being usurped by professionals. However fantastic those professionals might be, families may find that difficult. One of the features of the Mental Capacity Bill before it became an Act was the number of representations that we received from family organisations which were concerned that in what we were doing we should not forget them, be they the parents of young people who had long-term learning disabilities or those who cared for elderly people and wished to play a key part in their lives. We have been quite careful to try to differentiate between those who clearly have somebody who can act on their behalf with the right support, and who will look after the best interests and the needs of the individual very carefully from a position of being their friend or loved one—bearing in mind everything that I have said previously about making sure that they know how to do that effectively—and those who might need independent support because they are not in that position. We should not mix them up in a way that would prevent family members acting in the best interests of those individuals. That is the right and appropriate way forward. We want to make sure that those representatives are told how to ask for reviews and how to go to the Court of Protection if they felt it necessary, and that support and advice are available to them. We consider that, once we have the person’s representative in place, we do not need the independent mental capacity advocate, whose role should cease because the representative has taken over that function as appropriate. They should be invited and enabled to do so with the right kind of support. We believe that we have got the balance right between independent professional advice and support in particular cases and at particular moments, and enabling family members, with the right level of support, to act on behalf of their loved ones. When the noble Baroness reflects on the matter, she will perhaps see that we have sought to get that balance right. However, as I indicated, I accept that it is very important to ensure that the representatives can act in an individual’s best interests because they have the information and support that they need.