It is a pleasure to follow for the second time today my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Simon Baynes). As warm-up acts go, it really is quite unfair to follow somebody so articulate and so well-considered twice and try to look good by comparison.
I wish to pay tribute to, and thank, my hon. Friend the Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) for introducing this Bill. I have had the pleasure of participating in the Science and Technology Committee and various other endeavours with him. I know that he takes very seriously any endeavour in which he participates, and this has all the hallmarks of his usual excellent work.
The Bill is pragmatic—it is pragmatism at its finest—as it addresses the key issues and gaps in the current LPA application process through a combination of good sense and innovative technology. I was struck by the fact that the Bill passed its Committee stage on St David’s day and it is having its Third Reading on St Patrick’s day—happy St Patrick’s day, Mr Deputy Speaker. I hope that its next stage will be closer to St George’s day than it is to St Andrew’s day, because we cannot wait for this much longer.
The measures in the Bill will help to reduce administrative burdens and minimise the likelihood of application errors which, as we have heard, can be tortuous and drag the process out for far too long. Most importantly, they will ease the burdens on applicants and their loved ones who find themselves in these unfortunate circumstances. As we heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) and for Clwyd South, sometimes these situations can move extremely quickly. When someone is going
through a complex and tortuous process, the emotional burden can make it too much to complete the process, leading to the very worst of outcomes.
The Law Society considers these to be some of the most important legal documents that people will ever sign. To that end, I welcome the provision to allow chartered legal executives to perform certification. That will provide more choice and will be much more affordable for people. One of the perversities of the process is that sometimes people feel that they have to commission a solicitor to go through the process and that can be expensive. Someone on a modest income may have financial assets to protect, such as a house, and the wellbeing of a loved one to consider, but may not have the disposable income to get a solicitor. It is wrong that some people may be effectively priced out of the system, and the Bill will go a long way to removing some of the barriers that people have to accessing it.
A case in which that happened came across my desk not long ago. A constituent wrote to me about his experience of a delayed LPA process. During the height of the covid-19 backlog in 2021, I was contacted by a man who had been waiting for more than five months for a decision on his LPA application for his 91-year-old mother who was suffering from dementia. Weary of the process and the delays, my constituent hired a solicitor to complete the application. He had been assured that it was filed correctly. On Second Reading, my hon. Friend the Member for Blyth Valley (Ian Levy) flagged a similar case. My constituent waited months for the application decision while his mother’s mental health deteriorated and she was no longer able to manage her finances or health-related arrangements. It then turned out that an error had been made in the process by the solicitor, the forms had all been returned and the process had been in abeyance. My hon. Friend mentioned that he had encountered a similar situation when undertaking this process for a loved one, and he is himself legally qualified. That is how mystifying the process can be. I too have a legal background and have taken a cursory look at what the process involves: it scares the living whatsits out of me. As my constituent’s mother’s dementia became more severe, she had no concept of the value of money or how to pay bills, and was acutely vulnerable to cold callers and scammers, but there were no protections in place for her.
My constituent and his mother are not the only ones dealing with the delays. I am acutely aware that people up and down the country are waiting for certainty. We have all had the conversation—people put off the decision, as they do in making a will, because they do not like to think about their own mortality. They are always waiting for the next time. When my dad was diagnosed with cancer, fairly late, none of these things had been done because everybody thinks that they will live for ever and will get around to it tomorrow. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild), “Get that will sorted asap!”