Category Archives: adult social care

Ghosts in the judicial review machine (or, “I think it’s going to be a long, long time”)

Posted on January 15, 2013 by suesspiciousminds

 

A discussion of the decision of R and Naureen Hyatt and Salford City Council 2012   (which relates to judicial reviews, costs disputes and accommodation under section 21 of the National Assistance Act 1948 as it pertains to failed asylum seekers, so I hope you will forgive me for a flight of fancy and digression to liven it up)

 

I once read that the screen-writing Coen Brothers use a particular technique in creating tension in their films. They write a scene, and box the character into a corner, a predicament that there is no possible way out of.  They bat around possible solutions until they exhaust all possible exits that they can think of.

 

Then they leave the script for a week, a month, however long it takes, until they have hit upon an escape mechanism for that predicament – the idea being that if they are genuinely stumped at how to escape the scene, the audience won’t be likely to be able to second guess in a few moments the solution that took them months to hit upon.

 

 

In Ancient Greece, when playwrights constructed their plays, usually involving a combination of philosophy, fine wordplay and frogs, they often found that they had boxed themselves into a corner. The hero was faced with a situation that could not possibly be resolved.  A grisly death, a broken heart, an unsolveable dilemma, was all that lay ahead.  How to deliver a happy ending?

 

And their solution to this was the deus ex machina, the ghost in the machine. A crane type device would be used to lower an actor into the stage or arena, the actor playing a God. Of course, the God could solve any problem in an instant, resolve any dilemma, any drama.  That was a boon to the playwright, but of course robs the scene of any dramatic tension.

 

Imagine if you were watching an episode of 24 and Jack Bauer was trapped inside a volcano  in Hawaii that’s about to erupt, he is handcuffed to  the steering wheel of his car, and the ignition keys are in the beak of a paramilitary parakeet who we have just watched fly away, and then he learns that a nuclear bomb is about to go off at the Hoover dam in just two minutes and only his fingerprint can stop the bomb and then the credits roll. Tense, or what?   

 

volcano

 

If you tune in the following week, to see God fly down into the volcano, stop time and instantly transport Jack to the Hoover damn and unlock his handcuffs, you might feel disappointed by this resolution.  The next time there is a cliffhanger, you won’t feel apprehensive and nervous about how Jack will get out of it, you’ll just think “Ah, God will come down and sort it out”    – in short, the cheap device used to get the writers out of a tough spot will just make you feel cheated.

 

[The way I did when watching the black and white serial Rocket Man aged 12, when a “cliffhanger” showed a car in which Rocket Man was locked in the trunk plummet off a cliff, clearly showing that it went over the edge and that nobody got out of it so he was undoubtedly dead, and next week’s episode began  with completely different footage of him jumping out before it went off the cliff.   I remain bitter about this, to this very day, and I never watched another episode]

 

rocket man 

 

 

Curse you Rocket Man! !!

 

So, deus ex machina became frowned on as a narrative device, and to this day are viewed as a bit of a cop out, or cheap flimsy storytelling.

 

 

Anyway, on to the case,

 

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2013/1795.html

 

 

Essentially, the claimant was a failed asylum seeker and wanted the Local Authority to provide him with accommodation under section 21 of the National Assistance Act 1948.

 

  1. Section 21 of the 1948 Act provides:

“(1) Subject to and in accordance with the provisions of this Part of this Act, a local authority may with the approval of the Secretary of State, and to such extent as he may direct shall, make arrangements for providing —

(a) residential accommodation for persons who by reason of age, illness, disability or any other circumstances are in need of care and attention which is not otherwise available to them; and

(aa) residential accommodation for expectant and nursing mothers who are in need of care and attention which is not otherwise available to them

(1A) A person to whom section 115 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 (exclusion from benefits) applies may not be provided with residential accommodation under subsection (1)(a) if his need for care and attention has arisen solely —

(a) because he is destitute; or

(b) because of the physical effects, or anticipated physical effects, of his being destitute.”

 

So, his being a failed asylum seeker makes it very hard for him to get accommodation under s21, and he claimed his need was not as a result of destitution or physical effects of destitution, and the LA claimed that it was.

 

 Various demanding and defying letters were exchanged and a judicial review was issued.

 

By the time the case got into a substantive hearing, the claimant had managed to overturn the immigration authorities decision that his asylum claim was refused. That then gets rid of s 21 (1A) as a relevant factor.

 

Accord was reached that he would be provided with accommodation and the claim was withdrawn.

 

There then followed a debate about costs – the Claimant claimed that he should win his costs because he had achieved his desired result but had had to bring a JR case to do it, the LA claimed that costs should not be paid as the issue had not been litigated and the Claimant might well not have been successful if it had been.

 

The Judge decided that it was not possible to determine which side would have won had the issue been litigated, and made no order as to costs.

 

The Claimant appealed.

 

The relevant legal authority on this vexed issue of where costs fall in a JR case where the matter is settled rather than litigated is set out in  Re M  v Croydon LBC  2012

 

 

  1. On 8th May 2012 the Court of Appeal handed down its decision in R (M) v Croydon London Borough Council [2012] EWCA Civ 595, [2012] 1 WLR 2607. The claimant in that case was an asylum seeker, whose age was in dispute. The claimant brought judicial review proceedings to compel the defendant local authority to reassess his age. The action ultimately settled in the claimant’s favour, leaving only the question of costs to be determined by the court. Lindblom J decided that there should be no order for costs. The Court of Appeal allowed the claimant’s appeal and ordered the defendant to pay the claimant’s costs.
  1. Lord Neuberger MR gave the leading judgment, with which Hallett and Stanley Burnton LJJ agreed. At paragraphs 47 to 64 Lord Neuberger gave general guidance as to how costs should be dealt with following a settlement. In the latter part of that passage he dealt specifically with cases in the Administrative Court. He identified three different scenarios. The first scenario is a case where the claimant has been wholly successful whether following a contested hearing or pursuant to a settlement. The second scenario is a case where the claimant has only succeeded in part following a contested hearing or pursuant to a settlement. The third scenario is a case where there has been some compromise which does not actually reflect the claimant’s claims.
  1. At paragraph 63 Lord Neuberger gave the following guidance in respect of the third scenario:

“In case (iii), the court is often unable to gauge whether there is a successful party in any respect and, if so, who it is. In such cases, therefore, there is an even more powerful argument that the default position should be no order for costs. However, in some such cases it may well be sensible to look at the underlying claims and inquire whether it was tolerably clear who would have won if the matter had not settled. If it is, then that may well strongly support the contention that the party who would have won did better out of the settlement, and therefore did win.”

 

[This is a pain in the neck decision, since now when you settle a JR, you have to have an argument about who would have won, if you’d fought the whole thing, which is nearly as cumbersome as just fighting the whole thing] 

The Claimant argued that effectively, having settled the case and obtained his desired outcome, the original Judge ought to have determined that he had succeeded or would have succeeded had the case been litigated, and that costs should have followed.

 

The Court of Appeal disagreed , and you will see from my underlining, that they considered that the reason for the favourable settlement was the intervention of a third party – the immigration authority reversing their decision – a deus ex machina, and where that was the cause of the favourable settlement, one could not determine that the Local Authority were to blame.

 

  1. The second ground of appeal is that when one looks at all the factors which ought to have been taken into account, the judge should have been driven to the conclusion that the defendant should pay the claimants’ costs. The factors upon which the claimants rely are the following:

i) The claimants achieved the substantive benefit which they were seeking, namely long term housing and welfare support.

ii) The claimants achieved an immediate benefit, namely interim relief, which they could not have achieved without litigation.

iii) The claimants complied with the pre-action protocol and sent appropriate letters to the council before commencing proceedings.

iv) The conduct of the council was unreasonable. It resisted the claimants’ claim at every stage. It brushed aside the letters from the claimants’ solicitors. It did not provide interim accommodation for the claimants until it was ordered to do so.

v) The claimants’ case was strong. If the litigation had gone to trial, it is very likely that they would have won.

  1. Let me deal with those factors in the order set out above. As to the first factor, it is undoubtedly correct that the claimants have achieved their ultimate objective, namely long term housing and welfare benefits. On the other hand they have achieved that objective not because of any court order or concession by the council. The claimants have achieved that objective because of the Secretary of State’s decision to grant exceptional leave to remain. As Moore-Bick LJ observed in argument, this came as a deus ex machina. In my view the favourable intervention by a third party not involved in the litigation cannot be a reason to order the defendant to pay the claimants’ costs.
  1. I turn now to the second factor. The claimants applied for interim relief. The council opposed the application. The court granted interim relief. If the claimants had applied on 10th December 2010 for the costs of the interim relief application, Judge Waksman may have ordered the council to pay those costs. Alternatively, he may have ordered that the claimants’ cost of the application be costs in the cause. In the event, however, with the agreement of both parties Judge Waksman reserved the costs of the interim relief application, without any discussion of the basis on which costs were reserved.
  1. Since the underlying dispute between the parties never came to trial, I do not see any basis upon which Judge Stewart on 12th April 2012 could have ordered that the costs reserved by Judge Waksman on 10th December 2010 be paid by the council. Indeed in their lengthy written submissions on costs dated 30th March 2012 the claimants did not ask for an order that they be awarded the reserved costs of the interim application. I am therefore quite satisfied that Judge Stewart cannot be criticised for failing to make any separate and specific order in respect of the reserved costs.
  1. Mr. Wise relies upon the claimants’ success in obtaining interim relief as one of the reasons why Judge Stewart should have awarded to the claimants the entire costs of the action. He points out that the claimants got what they wanted in the teeth of the council’s opposition.
  1. The difficulty with this argument is that Judge Waksman was not adjudicating upon the substantive dispute between the parties. He began his judgment by saying that for the purpose of the current application the claimants had “a fairly modest task”. They only had to show their case was “prima facie arguable”. He did not even decide whether the claimants’ case was strong enough to merit the grant of permission to proceed. He simply made an order for interim relief to protect the claimants’ position until there could be a “rolled up” hearing.
  1. In my view, the fact that the claimants obtained interim relief does not mean that they were successful in the action. It is not a reason for awarding to the claimants the costs of the action.
  1. I turn now to the third factor. The claimants are to be commended for complying with the pre-action protocol. If following the commencement of proceedings the council had conceded the relief sought without admitting liability, they would have had difficulty in resisting an order for costs. The present case, however, is different. There has been no substantive decision by the court and no concession by the council. In these circumstances the fact that the claimants complied with the protocol is not a reason for awarding to them the costs of the action.
  1. I turn next to the fourth factor, the conduct of the council. The council, like the claimants, have been consistent. They have carried out assessments as required by 1990 Act. They concluded that they were not obliged to provide accommodation for the claimants pursuant to section 21 of the 1948 Act. This was the council’s position both before and after the issue of proceedings. Whether the council were right in their assessment of the position is a matter which has not been judicially determined. In my view, the council’s conduct in this case is not such as to attract an adverse costs order.
  1. I come finally to the fifth factor, the strength of the claimants’ underlying case. We have heard submissions from Mr. Wise as to why the claimants would probably have won. We have heard submissions from Mr. Howell as to why the claimants’ case was unfounded and they would probably have lost.
  1. It is not the function of this court on a costs appeal to give a substantive decision about litigation which never came to trial. Suffice it to say that both Mr. Wise and Mr. Howell put forward formidable arguments.
  1. For present purposes, it is necessary to focus on the material which was placed before Judge Stewart in April 2012. This comprised the parties’ written submission on costs and the court file. The court file would have included the pleadings and the evidence previously lodged. On reading and re-reading this material, I am not surprised that Judge Stewart was uncertain as to who would have won if the action had come to trial. I find myself in a similar state of uncertainty. In my view, it cannot possibly be said that the judge’s conclusion in this regard was either wrong or perverse.
  1. On reviewing all the circumstances of this case, I do not believe that the judge’s costs order can be faulted. The judge made no error of law or error of principle in the exercise of his discretion under rule 44.3 which would warrant intervention by this court

 

 

I know, this rambled about a bit *, but come on, you never thought you’d get Jack Bauer, volcanoes, Rocket Man, Greek theatre and parakeets in a law article on costs orders in judicial reviews, did you?

 

[* a lot ]

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As clear as a bell (if the bell were made out of mud)

Posted on December 27, 2012 by suesspiciousminds

The High Court helps out yet again, on ordinary residence issues, between Local Authorities, with head-scratching results. I think I finally get it, though it took three reads of the judgment.  In the words of Bertie Wooster,  “the slight throbbing about the temples told me that this discussion had reached saturation point.”

 

Suesspicious Minds accepts no liability for any such throbbing about the temples in the reader who attempts this judgment. 

This happened in the case of  Cornwall Council v Secretary of State for Health and others 2012

 

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2012/3739.html

 

This time, it relates to an adult with profound difficulties, who was owed duties by the State under the National Assistance Act 1948 to provide him with accommodation and services to meet those complex needs. The issue was, which precise bit of the State, and more importantly, which local authorities local taxpayers were about to shell out a huge wedge of cash on a person who had very little whatsoever to do with them.

 

The duty of course, is owed by that Local Authority in which the person is ordinarily resident, but in adult cases, that test of ordinary residence comes with a settled intention on the person’s part to live or settle there.  Where the person lacks capacity to form such intention, problems arise.

 

The various local authorities involved went to the Secretary of State for a determination, under section 32 (3) of the National Assistance Act 1948.

 

The Secretary of State looked at the case, and determined that this adult, who was not physically living in Cornwall,  was not accommodated in Cornwall, had no home in Cornwall and visited his parents in Cornwall two or three times per year, was the responsibility of Cornwall. 

 

Unsurprisingly, Cornwall didn’t like that much, and challenged it by way of judicial review.  It does seem manifestly crackers that a council’s taxpayers can be obliged to fork out upkeep for an adult who has never lived in their area, is never going to live in their area and whose sole connection with it is that his parents live there.

 

Cornwall  felt, that Wiltshire, who had accommodated this adult in 1991, when he and his parents had been living in Wiltshire, and had been looking after him ever since, were the authority who had ordinary residence.  From 1991 to 2004, he had been living with foster parents in Wiltshire; but then when he became an adult was provided with residential care in a third local authority’s area, South Gloucestershire. By that time, the adults parents had moved to Cornwall.

 

Cornwall, Wilshire, South Gloucestershire and Somerset (who, I think) were the local authority whose area this adult might be moving to in the future, had different ideas about who was the local authority responsible for providing care for this adult for the remainder of his days.  Though I suspect they all expressed it in broadly the same way “Wherever this person is ordinarily resident, it isn’t in my area”

 

 

I am afraid that the discussion within the judgment is eye-wateringly complex, but shakes down to this, at its heart, deriving from R v Waltham Forest LBC, ex p. Vale, 25 February 1985.

 

Taylor J set out two approaches, which are referred to as “test 1” and “test 2” in the Departmental Guidance. “Test 1” applies where the person is so severely handicapped as to be totally dependent upon a parent or guardian. Taylor J stated that such a person (in that case it was a 28 year old woman) is in the same position as a small child and her ordinary residence is that of her parents or guardian “because that is her base”. The second approach, “test 2” considers the question as if the person is of normal mental capacity, taking account of all the facts of the person’s case, including physical presence in a particular place and the nature and purpose of that presence as outlined in Shah, but without requiring the person himself or herself to have adopted the residence voluntarily

 

 

So, if the person has capacity, one looks, in the traditional Shah sense, of whether they have made a settled intention to live somewhere (even if that is not where they are physically living), and it would not have been Cornwall.

 

But, where they don’t, even though they are an adult, the Court treats them as a small child, and ordinary residence is where the parent of that person lives.

 

(Even if the adult were 50 and the parents were 80, one assumes)

 

Using my traditional loophole lawyer mind, I’m troubled as to how the Court resolve the issue of ordinary residence here where an adult’s parents are deceased, or live separately to one another in two different local authorities.

 

 

 

For the purposes of the case, the important arguments were in the fourth ground for JR, that Vale was now overtaken by subsequent decisions and the Mental Capacity Act, and that it was no longer the right test for deciding cases of this kind.  And that physical presence, rather than the physical location of the parents of an adult with capacity issues, was a more important factor in determining ordinary residence.

 

If you don’t want to slog to the end of this very law-heavy paragraph, and I honestly could not blame you – the upshot is that the High Court think the Secretary of State is right, Vale remains good law, Cornwall got well and truly hosed.   The underlined passage is probably why.

 

 

 

  1. iv) Ground 4:
  1. I turn to ground 4, the challenge to the approach in Vale’s case based on the submissions that there is a conflict between the tests in that case and those set out by the House of Lords in Shah’s case and in Mohammed v Hammersmith and Fulham LBC and that the approach has been overtaken by the approach to mental incapacity in the Mental Health Act 2005. In his reply, Mr Lock also submitted that Vale’s case is not authority for the proposition that, after thirteen years first with foster parents and then in two care homes, PH’s “ordinary residence” at the relevant time was that of his parents and follows their ordinary residence because they continue to take an interest in his welfare.
  1. The starting point in considering Mr Lock’s submissions is the acknowledgment by Lord Scarman in Shah’s case (see [1983] 2 AC at 343G-H) that the statutory framework or the legal context in which the words “ordinary residence” are used may require a different meaning to that in his “canonical definition”. The context before the court in that case was entitlement to a mandatory grant for fees and maintenance for students pursuing a course of study leading to a first degree or comparable course of further education. To be so entitled, they had to be “ordinarily resident” in the United Kingdom throughout the three years preceding the first year of the course. The key concepts in Lord Scarman’s definition (set out at [6]) are that the residence must be “voluntarily” adopted and that it must be for “settled purposes”. Lord Scarman stated that these are the two ways in which the mind of the individual concerned is important in determining ordinary residence: see [1983] AC at 344. As Mr Harrop-Griffiths observed, in the light of the facts of Shah’s case, it was hardly surprising that Lord Scarman did not seek to explain how the test he stated could, if necessary, be adapted in the case of an incapacitated person. What is clear, however, is that a test which accords a central role to the intention of the person whose “ordinary residence” is to be determined cannot be applied without adaptation when considering the position of a person who does not have the capacity to decide where to live.
  1. The other case on which Mr Lock relied, Mohammed v Hammersmith and Fulham LBC was also not concerned with a person who lacked capacity. Moreover, it was not concerned with the term “ordinary residence” but with the term “normal residence” in sections 198, 199 and 202 of the Housing Act 1996. M was a homeless person who had lived as the guest of a friend in Hammersmith for two and a half months. After being reunited with his wife, the couple applied to the Hammersmith and Fulham Council for assistance with accommodation. In July 1998 the Council determined that neither the applicant nor his wife had any local connection with Hammersmith but, as the wife had a local connection with Ealing by reason of her several years of residence there, their application was referred to the local housing authority for Ealing.
  1. The question for the court was whether the Hammersmith and Fulham Council had erred in not taking into account the period spent by M when living in its area as the guest of his friend. It was held that it had. Interim accommodation within the area of the Council could constitute “normal residence” for the purpose of section 199(1)(a) and thus be evidence of a local connection. Lord Slynn of Hadley stated (at [17]) that where a person in fact has no “normal residence” at a particular time, the term is to be given the same meaning as “ordinarily resident” in Shah’s case, and (see ibid at [18]) that “the prima facie meaning of normal residence is a place where, at the relevant time, the person in fact resides”. He continued:

“That therefore is the question to be asked, and it is not appropriate to consider whether, in a general or abstract sense, such a place would be considered an ordinary or normal residence. So long as that place where he eats and sleeps is voluntarily accepted by him, the reason why he is there rather than somewhere else must not prevent that place from being his normal residence. He may not like it, he may prefer some other place, but that place is, for the relevant time, the place where he normally resides.”

  1. Mr Lock gains some support from Lord Slynn’s statement that the term “normal residence” is to be given the same meaning as “ordinarily residence”. But it is limited support. Apart from the differences of statutory context and terminology, Lord Slynn stated the term “normal residence” is only to be given the same meaning as “ordinarily residence” where, at the relevant time, the person in fact has no “normal residence”. The test is thus a surrogate because the person in fact had no “normal residence”. It is, indeed, a surrogate which accorded an important role to intention. Lord Slynn’s reference to the need for the person to “voluntarily accept” the place where he eats and sleeps, suggests that physical presence was used as an indication of what the person voluntarily wanted and it was that which could constitute a local link. Moreover, the factual circumstances included a number of features pointing to a strong attraction to the borough in which M was physically present. They included the presence of relatives in the borough and the need for medical treatment which was being provided by a hospital in the borough. It would appear that physical presence is insufficient in itself and that what is required is an underlying attachment.
  1. Mr Lock also relied on R (Hertfordshire CC) v Hammersmith and Fulham LBC [2011] EWCA Civ 77 and R (Sunderland CC) v South Tyneside C [2012] EWCA Civ 1232, two cases about the meaning of the term “resident” in section 117 of the Mental Health Act 1983. The Hertfordshire case is of limited assistance because there was no evidence that JM lacked capacity: see [2010] EWHC 562 (Admin) per Mitting J at [5] and [8] and [2011] EWCA Civ 77 per Carnwath LJ at [8]. In the Sunderland case Lloyd LJ stated (at [26]) that, in understanding the meaning of the term “resident” in the 1983 Act, he did not find it helpful to consider cases in which “ordinary residence” in other legislation has been construed. Similarly, I do not find the cases on the term “resident” of assistance in construing the term “ordinary residence” in the 1948 Act.
  1. I therefore turn to Vale‘s case. It was the first case in which the determination of the “ordinary residence” of an incapacitated person fell for decision. For the reasons I have given, I do not consider that the approaches set out by Taylor J in it are “inconsistent” with the approach in either Shah‘s case or Mohammed v Hammersmith and Fulham LBC. Is it, however, outdated or flawed in some other way?
  1. On examination, the facts and the judgment of Taylor J show that what are referred to as “Test 1” and “Test 2” in the Departmental Guidance are not rules of law but two approaches to the circumstances of a particular case. Both involve questions of fact and degree, although Test 2 may be thought to do so to a greater degree.
  1. Vale‘s case concerned Judith, a 28 year old woman who lacked the mental capacity to decide where to live. She was born in London but her parents moved to Dublin in 1961, when she was five. She was placed in residential care in the Republic of Ireland. In 1978, when she was 22, her parents moved back to England with their other children to an address in the area of Waltham Forest. Judith remained at a home for the mentally handicapped in Ireland, but visited her parents two or three times a year. In May 1984, she returned to England to her parents’ address. In anticipation of her return her parents, who wanted to place Judith in a suitable home, sought assistance from Waltham Forest LBC. After her arrival, a placement was found at a home in Stoke Poges, in Buckinghamshire. The DHSS agreed to meet the major part of the cost. Waltham Forest refused to make up the shortfall on the ground that Judith had not been a resident in the borough, but had transferred from a residential placement in Ireland where her need for residential accommodation arose.
  1. After considering Shah‘s case, Taylor J stated that, where a person’s learning difficulties were so severe as to render them totally dependent on a parent or guardian “the concept of her having an independent ordinary residence of her own which she has adopted voluntarily and for which she has a settled purpose does not arise”. He identified two alternative approaches to the determination of where such a person is ordinarily resident. Where a person is so severely handicapped as to be totally dependent upon a parent or guardian, he stated that she is in the same position as a small child and her ordinary residence is that of her parents or guardian “because that is her base”. This (see [24(8) – (9)] is referred to as Test 1 in the Departmental Guidance.
  1. Taylor J stated that the alternative approach (which the Departmental Guidance refers to as Test 2) is to consider the question as if the person is of normal mental capacity. He considered where the person was in fact residing and the purpose of such residence. He stated that Judith was residing “with her parents for the settled purpose of being looked after and having her affairs managed as part of the regular order of her life for the time being” and “until it was possible to obtain funding for her to go” to the home in Stoke Poges. He stated that there was no other address at which she could have been ordinarily resident, that Shah’s case required future intent to be left out of account, and that Judith could not be regarded as a squatter in her parents’ home. The Departmental Guidance (paragraph 34, summarised at [24(10)]) rationalised what he had said about this second alternative thus:- “all the facts of a person’s case should be considered, including physical presence in a particular place and the nature and purpose of that presence as outlined in Shah, but without requiring the person themselves to have adopted the residence voluntarily”.
  1. Vale‘s case was decided two months after the decision of the House of Lords in Shah‘s case. It was the first case in which the approach to the determination of the “ordinary residence” of an incapacitated person fell for decision. It was applied by Potts J in R v Redbridge LBC, ex p. East Sussex CC [1993] COD 256, and considered without disapproval by Charles J in R (Greenwich LBC) v Secretary of State [2006] EWHC 2576 (Admin) and the Court of Appeal in R (Hertfordshire CC) v Hammersmith and Fulham LBC [2011] EWCA Civ 77 at [41] (Carnwath LJ). Central government and local authorities have placed significant reliance on it in formulating guidance.
  1. In these circumstances there needs to be a good reason to replace it and a satisfactory alternative approach. Cornwall‘s case is that primacy should be given to physical presence. It is, however, important not to accord insufficient weight to the fact that Parliament chose the concept of “ordinary residence” as opposed to “residence”, to the difference between those concepts, and to the other factors which are of relevance in determining “ordinary residence”.
  1. It is clear from the cases, including Shah’s case and Mohammed v Hammersmith and Fulham LBC, that physical presence is not sufficient to constitute “ordinary residence” but the implication of Mr Lock’s submissions is that it is a necessary requirement. He relied on Holman J’s statement in North Yorkshire CC v Wiltshire CC [1999] Fam. 323 at 333 that it is “wholly artificial to regard a child as continuing to be ordinarily resident in an area in which neither he nor his family continues actually to reside and to which neither expects to return”. In PH’s case that has been the position since May 2012, but it was not the position in December 2004. At that time PH’s parents lived in Cornwall, there was a physical presence by him in the county during his visits. Indeed, as it happened, PH was physically present in Cornwall on the day before his eighteenth birthday, although I disregard that fortuitous circumstance as of no significance to the determination of the question before me. However, his parents were much involved in the arrangements for his care and took an active and continuing interest in him, and that is a relevant factor.
  1. At this stage it is instructive to consider the two first instance cases in which Vale’s case has been considered. The first is R v Redbridge LBC, ex p. East Sussex CC , 21 December 1992, of which I only have the summary of the judgment in the Crown Office Digest: [1993] COD 168. The father of handicapped autistic twins, who lived in Haringey, placed them at a residential school in East Sussex. Four years later in 1986 the twins’ parents moved to the area of Redbridge LBC and sought assistance from the council. In 1987 Redbridge informed the father that, pending a statutory assessment, it would accept responsibility for the education of the twins, then aged fifteen. In January 1989 the residential school informed Redbridge that it would be closing on 17 March 1989.On 2 March Redbridge learned that the twins’ parents had sold their house in Redbridge and left this country to live in Nigeria in December 1988, and, on 10 March, Redbridge informed East Sussex of the impending closure of the school, the parents’ return to Nigeria, and that it considered that the statutory responsibility for the twins lay on East Sussex. As the twins were in urgent need of assistance and were in its area, East Sussex provided emergency respite care under the National Health Act 1977, but instituted judicial review proceedings contending that the duty to provide for the twins under the 1948 Act lay on Redbridge. There appears to have been no consideration of responsibility under the Children Act 1989.
  1. Potts J held that the duty under the 1948 Act fell on East Sussex. The summary in the Crown Office Digest states that he held that the twins were ordinarily resident in Redbridge until December 1988 because they were so mentally handicapped as to be totally dependent on their parents, and because Redbridge was their base. However, after their parents left and the family house was sold, they had no settled residence, were physically present in East Sussex, and were in urgent need of care. East Sussex was (see [23]) the “local authority of the moment” and, as such, the duty fell on it. The summary does not state whether the twins had ever visited their parents in Redbridge before the parents returned to Nigeria. It refers to Redbridge seeking to contact the parents in December 1988 about funding a holiday placement, and to the fact that the parents left for Nigeria without informing Redbridge. These factors suggest that there may have been only little contact between the parents and the twins, even in the school holidays, before that time. Nevertheless, their parents’ house in Redbridge was stated to be their base.
  1. The second case is R (Greenwich LBC) v Secretary of State[2006] EWHC 2576 (Admin). D, an elderly woman who lived in the area of Bexley LBC moved into a care home in Bexley. Her means were such that she and her family were responsible for the costs of her care, and her home was sold to provide funding for this. After about a year, it was decided that it was no longer appropriate for D to remain at that home because she needed to be in a EMI nursing home or in NHS care. She was placed in a nursing home in the area of Greenwich LBC. Four weeks and five days later, on 29 June 2002 her capital had fallen to the point that responsibility for her care fell on the appropriate local authority. There was a dispute between Greenwich and Bexley and they referred the matter to the Secretary of State. He determined that, although the move to the home in Greenwich was facilitated by Bexley, it was D’s family and not Bexley who placed her there. The question was where she was ordinarily resident on the date when her available capital fell below the relevant financial cap. The Secretary of State decided that it was Greenwich. After considering the authorities, including Vale‘s case, Charles J stated (at [72]):

“Habitual or ordinary residence is in each case a question of fact. The temptation to turn it into an abstract proposition should be resisted. Habitual or ordinary residence is not equivalent to physical presence. There can be ordinary or habitual residence without continuous presence, while physical presence is not necessarily equivalent to residence. Residence means living somewhere. The significance of ordinary or habitually is that it connotes residence adopted voluntarily and for settled purposes. That was the point emphasised before me and appears clearly from Shah. Although ordinary in one place can be lost immediately, acquisition of a new ordinary residence requires an appreciable period of time. The length of the appreciable period of time is not fixed, since it depends on the nature and quality of the connection with the new place. However, it may only be a few weeks, perhaps, in some circumstances, even days. In order to establish ordinary residence over a period of time a person must spend more than a token part of that period in the place in question. Ordinary residence is not broken by temporary or occasional absences of long or short duration. …”

  1. Charles J thus regarded “ordinary residence” as involving questions of fact and degree, and factors such as time, intention and continuity, each of which were to be given a different weight according to the context: see [73]. He also stated (see [74]) that the fact that the individual in that case did not have an existing right to reside at a place in Bexley on the relevant date is a significant factor to be taken into account, but “is not determinative of the issue”. Mr Lock’s submissions in effect suggested that PH could not be ordinarily resident in Cornwall because he did not have the “right” to reside at his natural parents’ home. Although certain passages in the Secretary of State’s determination in the Greenwich case might be understood to suggest that the Secretary of State regarded the absence of a place available in Bexley as determinative, Charles J stated (see [85]) that, on its true interpretation, the determination stated that, given all the factors that had to be taken into account, the key factor was that the individual did not in fact have anywhere to live in Bexley any longer, and was actually living in Greenwich, and that the factors that fell for consideration did not outweigh the force to be given to those points in determining her ordinary residence.
  1. Drawing the threads together, “ordinary residence” is a question of fact and degree, and if the Secretary of State gets the law right, the determination of a person’s ordinary residence is for the Secretary of State, subject only to Wednesbury unreasonableness. In the present case PH’s connections with Cornwall differed from Judith’s connections with Waltham Forest in Vale’s case. In one sense PH’s connections were more transitory because Judith had come to stay with her parents in Waltham Forest until appropriate arrangements were made for her whereas by December 2004 arrangements had been made for PH to be placed in a home in Somerset. But, in North Yorkshire CC v Wiltshire CC [1999] Fam. 323 at 334 Holman J stated that “the court is entitled to take into account matters other than where [the person himself or] herself was living during the specified period, and Potts J in R v Redbridge LBC, ex p. East Sussex CC .did not appear to have placed any weight on whether there was a physical presence by the twins in Redbridge during the period in which the court found they were ordinarily resident there.
  1. In deciding whether PH’s base was at the home of his natural parents, the Secretary of State applied the Vale Test 1 in a fact-sensitive way. Although not determinative of the legality of his decision, he did so in a similar way to that presented in “scenario 2” in paragraph 158 of the Departmental Guidance: which is summarised in the Appendix to this judgment.
  1. The Secretary of State examined (see determination, paragraphs 23-24, set out at [46]) whether there was a real relationship between PH and his natural parents and whether they were in fact making relevant decisions. He was entitled to take account of that and (see determination, paragraph 25) of the “entirety of the relationship between [PH] and his parents”. As part of that, he was also entitled to take account of the time spent by PH with them in Cornwall.
  1. It is also clear that the Secretary of State took account of the approach in section 4 of the Mental Capacity Act 2005. In considering the approach of PH’s family, he concluded that they viewed contact with PH in terms of what was in his best interests.
  1. The process of determining that PH was ordinarily resident in Cornwall may appear artificial. There would, however, have been a similar artificiality in determining that he was ordinarily resident in any of the other counties under consideration. The Secretary of State gave reasons for concluding that PH could not be considered ordinarily resident in Wiltshire at the relevant time: see paragraph 22 of the determination, which is set out at [46] above. Those reasons and that approach are in line and consistent with the decision of the Court of Appeal in Re D (a child) (care order: designated local authority) [2012] EWCA Civ 627.
  1. In D‘s case it was held that the “disregard” principle in section 105(6) of the 1989 Act did not apply when the ordinary residence of a sixteen year old mother had to be determined for the purpose of determining the ordinary residence of her baby. Elias LJ stated:

“[the mother] is treated as though she has two hats; she is a mother whose ordinary residence must be determined by common law principles when that concept is relevant for the purpose of determining her child’s ordinary residence for any purpose under the 1989 Act; but she is a child whose ordinary residence is modified by section 105(6) when it comes to determining her own place of ordinary residence for any purpose under that Act”. (at [45]).

The reasoning summarised in paragraph 22 of the Secretary of State’s determination represents the application of those common law principles.

  1. As to South Gloucestershire, for the reasons I have given in [66], by the relevant date it was clear that PH was only in South Gloucestershire on a very temporary basis and the settled intention required to establish “ordinary residence” could not be imputed to him. Finally, as to Somerset, although it was planned that he would move there shortly afterwards, at the relevant date he had never lived in that county. Shah‘s case required future intent to be left out of account.
  1. For these reasons, I have concluded that the Secretary of State’s determination that PH had, as his “base” his parents’ home as at the date of his eighteenth birthday, and hence was ordinarily resident in Cornwall was one that was properly open to him. Accordingly this application is dismissed.

 

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White papering over the cracks?

Posted on October 4, 2012 by suesspiciousminds

 

A very brief look at the draft Care and Support Bill.

 

 

There’s a consultation going on (isn’t there always?)  this time on Safeguarding for adults, and whether some new powers should be introduced.

Firstly, it recommends removing s47 of the 1948 National Assistance Act, which was the power to remove someone from their home. They say, and I tend to agree, that  “Enacted in a very different era, its language and intentions are not compatible with our current approach to community-based support that promotes and protects people’s human rights “

 

I completely agree that it is a dangling remnant of a bygone era when doctors always knew best, and I’m not sure it is deeply compatible with Human Rights and probably should be scrubbed from the statute books.

 

Having said that, I’m not sure that s47 is an active problem – I can recall having only even looked at it as a possibility (and then discounting it) in one case.  I’ve never heard of anyone ever applying for such an order.   [It is interesting, for example, that on the bible on community care law  – Luke Clements and Pauline Thompson’s  “Community Care and the Law”, the section on s47 removal powers is just under a page long and cites no case law about it at all. ]

 

In case you want to know, here is verse, and also chapter

 

47 Removal to suitable premises of persons in need of care and attention. E+W

(1)The following provisions of this section shall have effect for the purposes of securing the necessary care and attention for persons who—

(a)are suffering from grave chronic disease or, being aged, infirm or physically incapacitated, are living in insanitary conditions, and

(b)are unable to devote to themselves, and are not receiving from other persons, proper care and attention.

(2)If the medical officer of health certifies in writing to the appropriate authority that he is satisfied after thorough inquiry and consideration that in the interests of any such person as aforesaid residing in the area of the authority, or for preventing injury to the health of, or serious nuisance to, other persons, it is necessary to remove any such person as aforesaid from the premises in which he is residing, the appropriate authority may apply to a court of summary jurisdiction having jurisdiction in the place where the premises are situated for an order the next following subsection.

(3)On any such application the court may, if satisfied on oral evidence of the allegations in the certificate, and that it is expedient so to do, order the removal of the person to whom the application relates, by such officer of the appropriate authority as may be specified in the order, to a suitable hospital or other place in, or within convenient distance of, the area of the appropriate authority, and his detention 5and maintenance therein:

Provided that the court shall not order the removal of a person to any premises, unless either the person managing the premises has been heard in the proceedings or seven clear days’ notice has been given to him of the intended application and of the time and place at which it is proposed to be made.

(4)An order under the last foregoing subsection may be made so as to authorise a person’s detention for any period not exceeding three months, and the court may from time to time by order extend that period for such further period, not exceeding three months, as the court may determine.

 

 

So, I would agree that s47 be terminated with extreme prejudice, but it isn’t going to transform the world we live in.

 

The other big proposal is that there should be statutory principles about adult social care and safeguarding  (along the lines of the principles enshrined in the Children Act) , and to put it right at the beginning  – s1 the general duty of a local authority in exercising any powers under this Act with regard to an adult is to promote that adult’s well-being.

 

Again, I see no problem with that.

 

Then to give clear legal principles as to entitlement to support, including entitlement for carers and the right to insist on this being made by direct payments.   I remain sceptical that direct payments, or personalisation, is quite the magic wand that the Government believe it to be. I can see the concept that an individual should have the resources given to them to decide how they want to spend it on meeting their needs rather than having a paternalistic state decide, but I think in practice, it massively overlooks that adult social care tends to be given to the very most vulnerable members of society who may not be in quite the same position as a Local Authority bulk purchaser of services to achieve such good value for money. Nonetheless, direct payments and personalisation are the miracle cure, and thus we’re going to have them enshrined in legislation until such time as Government decides that passing the buck to vulnerable people to meet their own needs with a small amount of cash doesn’t really work.

 

 

This is a particularly interesting bit – clauses 31-33   – a person receiving a package of support will be entitled to the same package of support if they move to another area [at least until fresh assessments are done].  That is good for the person, certainly.

 

Very bad for the receiving local authority if the first LA realise that the person is planning a move and decides to offer them a ‘moon on a stick’ package of support which is Rolls Royce, knowing that they will only have to provide it for a week before the new LA gets lumbered with it for much longer.

 

It may well be a chance for festering scores to be settled between LA’s – it’s practically a statutory “griefing” mechanism.  [But maybe I am being too cynical, and neighbouring authorities will work together to achieve good outcomes for vulnerable adults moving between their authorities, just as they always endeavour to do now]

 

I do very much like the provision that where a person is placed in area B by Local Authority A, it will be Local Authority A who remain responsible for that person, and that will hopefully resolve a lot of inter-authority bickering.

 

 

There will be for the first time in statute, provisions about adult safeguarding, setting out the duty to carry out enquiries into suspected abuse, and there is discussion about whether the State should be able to apply for a warrant to gain access to a vulnerable person if it is believed they are being abused in order to investigate.

 

 

The consultation on that runs until 12th October, so if you have firm views about whether or not the State should have the ability to seek a warrant to enter the home of someone believed to be a vulnerable adult being abused, and the circumstances that would trigger such a warrant being granted, speak up quickly.

 

There are also interesting ‘smoothing’ provisions aimed at meeting the gap where a young person receives support and assistance from the LA under Children Act legislation until they reach 18, then get nothing at all whilst they wait for a community care assessment of their adult needs. The new proposals will ensure that the package of support they are getting as a child continue up until the community care assessment is done and a fresh package of support put in place.  I have to commend that, as being a gap that needed to be filled and a good proposal for filling it.  

 

All in all, I think this is a decent piece of draft legislation, and doesn’t contain anything that I consider to be outrageous or ill-conceived  (my personal anxieties about personalisation aside, that’s a direction we’ve been travelling in for a long while now)

 

 

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an englishwoman’s home is her castle (unless she is 82) ?

Posted on September 28, 2012 by suesspiciousminds

A race through KK v STCC 2012 – on deprivation of liberty, capacity and Court of Protection.

 

The judgment is on Baiili, here:-  http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/COP/2012/2136.html

 

It is a High Court decision, dealing with an 82 year old woman, KK, who had found herself in a nursing home STCC. It was, by all accounts a good nursing home, and meeting her needs. But KK wanted to go back to her home. The case obviously therefore grapples with interesting issues of capacity and where the State can or should assume responsibility for making decisions about a person’s life.

 

KK developed Parkinson’s disease and also had an admission to hospital following a fall. This left her disoriented and muddled and a psychiatrist who assessed her decided that she lacked capacity to make decisions. A best interests meeting (and I can already hear many of you saying “best interests? whose best interests?”) decided that she could not return home and should move to a nursing home. She made some improvements there and went back to her bungalow.  There was an out of hours emergency support line, and the LA report KK having used it over a thousand times in a six month period, leading them to review whether she could remain at home.

 

(This has interesting echoes of the Supreme Court case involving the woman who was incontinent at night and wanted workers to help get her out of bed, but was instead given effectively adult nappies – leading to the debate about whether provision of social care services ought to involve a duty of dignity, as opposed to just meeting the needs in the most cost-effective way.

R (on the application of ELAINE MCDONALD) v KENSINGTON & CHELSEA ROYAL LONDON BOROUGH COUNCIL (2011)[2011] UKSC 33  – it was one where the Court were split, and fervently so, but finally ruled that this method of meeting her needs did not violate her human rights.  Frankly, although the budgetary implications of the decision going the other way, and there being a right to be treated in a dignified way were enshrined in law would be a massive change, I wish personally that the decision had gone the other way. I don’t feel comfortable with the idea that this is not a breach of human rights – and this is something that the mainstream press completely overlooked in all their human rights bashing – denying people in their old age proper humane treatment is far worse than all the ‘not deported because he had a cat’ nonsense)

 

The STCC made a DOLS decision that KK was being deprived of her liberty, and followed the correct legal process. The case found itself in Court and to be challenged.

 

There is a nice summary of the law on capacity, which I’ll quote in full, as it is a good starting point for grappling with these issues

 

Capacity – the law

    1. A person may be deprived of their liberty under the DOLS if the six qualifying requirements under Schedule A1 of the 2005 Act are satisfied. In those circumstances, the supervisory body, (in this case CC), may, on the application of the managing authority (in this case STCC), issue a standard authorisation for the deprivation of liberty, and, prior to the determination of an application for a standard authorisation, the managing authority may issue an urgent authorisation. The six qualifying requirements include, under paragraph 12(1)(c) of the schedule, the “mental capacity requirement”. Paragraph 15 of the schedule provides that: “the relevant person meets the mental capacity requirement if he lacks capacity in relation to the question of whether or not he should be accommodated in the relevant… care home for the purpose of being given the relevant care or treatment”.

 

    1. When a standard authorisation has been made by a supervisory body, s. 21A(2) empowers the Court of Protection to determine any questions relating to, inter alia, whether P meets one or more of the qualifying requirements. In particular, once the court determines the question, it may make an order varying or terminating the standard authorisation: s. 21A(3)(a). But once an application is made to the Court under s. 21A, the Court’s powers are not confined simply to determining that question. Once its jurisdiction is invoked, the court has a discretionary power under s. 15 to make declarations as to (a) whether a person has or lacks capacity to make a decision specified in the declaration; (b) whether a person has or lacks capacity to make decisions on such matters as are described in the declaration, and (c) the lawfulness or otherwise of any act done, or yet to be done, in relation to that person. Where P lacks capacity, the court has wide powers under s. 16 to make decisions on P’s behalf in relation to matters concerning his personal welfare or property or affairs.

 

    1. When addressing questions of capacity, the Court must apply the following principles.

 

    1. First, a person must be assumed to have capacity unless it is established that she lacks capacity: s. 1(2). The burden of proof therefore lies on the party asserting that P does not have capacity. In this case, therefore, the burden of proof lies on CC to prove that KK lacks capacity. The standard of proof is the balance of probabilities: s. 2(4).

 

    1. Secondly, the Act provides that a person lacks capacity in relation to a matter if at the material time he is unable to make a decision for himself in relation to the matter because of an impairment of, or disturbance in the functioning of, the mind or brain: s. 2(1). Thus the test for capacity involves two stages. The first stage, sometimes called the “diagnostic test”, is whether the person has such an impairment or disturbance. The second stage, sometimes known as the “functional test”, is whether the impairment or disturbance renders the person unable to make the decision. S. 3(1) provides that, for the purposes of s. 2, a person is unable to make a decision for himself if he is unable (a) to understand the information relevant to the decision; (b) to retain that information; (c) to use or weigh that information as part of the process of making the decision, or (d) to communicate his decision whether by talking, using sign language or any other means. Important guidance as to the assessment of capacity generally, and the interpretation and application of the four components of the functional test in particular, is set out in section 4 of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 Code of Practice.

 

    1. Third, capacity is both issue-specific and time specific. A person may have capacity in respect of certain matters but not in relation to other matters. Equally, a person may have capacity at one time and not at another. The question is whether at the date on which the court is considering the question whether the person lacks capacity in question, in this case to make decisions as to her residence and care.

 

    1. Fourthly, a person is not to be treated as unable to make a decision unless all practicable steps to help her to do so have been taken without success: s. 1(3). The Code of Practice stresses that “it is important not to assess someone’s understanding before they have been given relevant information about a decision” (para 4.16). “Relevant information” is said in paragraph 4.19 to include “what the likely consequences of a decision would be (the possible effects of deciding one way or another) – and also the likely consequences of making no decision at all”. Paragraph 4.46 of the Code of Practice adds that “it is important to assess people when they are in the best state to make the decision, if possible”.

 

    1. Fifth, I bear in mind and adopt the important observations of Macur J in LBL v RYJ [2010] EWHC 2664 (Fam) (at paragraph 24), that “it is not necessary for the person to comprehend every detail of the issue … it is not always necessary for a person to comprehend all peripheral detail .…” At paragraph 58 of the judgment, Macur J identified the question as being whether the person under review can “comprehend and weigh the salient details relevant to the decision to be made”. A further point – to my mind of particular importance in the present case – was also made by Macur J at paragraph 24 in that judgment: “…it is recognised that different individuals may give different weight to different factors.”

 

    1. Sixth, a person is not to be treated as unable to make a decision merely because she makes an unwise decision: s. 1(4). Paragraph 4.30 of the Code of Practice states: “It is important to acknowledge the difference between

 

  • unwise decisions … and
  • decisions based on a lack of understanding of risks or inability to weigh up the information about a decision.

Information about decisions the person has made based on a lack of understanding of risks or inability to weigh up the information can form part of a capacity assessment – particularly if someone repeatedly makes decisions that put them at risk or result in harm to them or someone else.”

    1. Finally, in assessing the question of capacity, the court must consider all the relevant evidence. Clearly, the opinion of an independently-instructed expert will be likely to be of very considerable importance, but in addition the court in these cases will invariably have evidence from other clinicians and professionals who have experience of treating and working with P, the subject of the proceedings. Often there will be evidence from family and friends of P. Occasionally, as in this case, there will be direct evidence from P herself. In A County Council v KD and L [2005] EWHC 144 (Fam) [2005] 1 FLR 851 at paras 39 and 44, Charles J observed “it is important to remember (i) that the roles of the court and the expert are distinct and (ii) it is the court that is in the position to weigh the expert evidence against its findings on the other evidence… the judge must always remember that he or she is the person who makes the final decision”. That case concerned an application for a care order under Part IV of the Children Act 1989, but the principles plainly apply to proceedings under the Mental Capacity Act in general and the assessment of the functional test under s. 2 in particular. In other words, when assessing the ability of P to (a) understand the information relevant to the decision (b) retain that information, and (c) use or weigh that information as part of the process of making the decision, the court must consider all the evidence, not merely the views of the independent expert. In many cases, perhaps most cases, the opinion of the expert will be confirmed by the other evidence, but inevitably there will be cases where the court reaches a different conclusion. When taking evidence from P herself, the court must plainly be careful about assessing the capacity to understand, retain and use and weigh up information, but, whilst acknowledging the important role for expert evidence, the assessment is ultimately a matter for the court.

 

  1. There is a further point, to which I alluded in an earlier decision in PH v A Local Authority, Z Ltd and R [2011] EWHC 1704 (Fam). In assessing the evidence, the court must be aware of the difficulties which may arise as a result of the close professional relationship between the clinicians and professionals treating and working with, P. In PH, I drew attention to a potential risk, identified by Ryder J in Oldham MBC v GW and PW [2007] EWHC136 (Fam) [2007] 2 FLR 597, another case brought under Part IV of the Children Act 1989, that the professionals and the court may be unduly influenced by what Ryder J called the “child protection imperative”, meaning “the need to protect a vulnerable child” that, for perfectly understandable reasons, may influence the thinking of professionals involved in caring for the child. Equally, in cases of vulnerable adults, there is a risk that all professionals involved with treating and helping that person – including, of course, a judge in the Court of Protection – may feel drawn towards an outcome that is more protective of the adult and thus, in certain circumstances, fail to carry out an assessment of capacity that is detached and objective. On the other hand, the court must be equally careful not to be influenced by sympathy for a person’s wholly understandable wish to return home.

 

 

Very nicely put, in my humble opinion, and it identifies one of the main pitfalls in this area – that of the State taking a very paternalistic approach of ‘we know best’.

 

KK gave evidence herself in Court, and the summary again is set out in full – there’s one particularly telling line at the end, when she was asked what would happen if at home in her bungalow, she were to fall and be unable to get up. She said, that if she fell on the floor and died on the floor, she would rather die in her own home than live somewhere else.

 

KK’s evidence

    1. Unusually, although not uniquely, this court received evidence from KK herself to assist in determining the question of capacity, not only in a written statement but also orally in court.

 

    1. In her oral evidence KK repeated that she wanted to live in her bungalow. She said: “Everything I’ve got is in that bungalow. My whole life. Everything there is familiar to me. I’ve got my hobbies. I’ve got all sorts of things. I am doing a model village. It is in my bedroom in the bungalow.” I asked KK how she got to her bungalow from the court. In reply, she correctly said that you have to go over a bridge, but gave the wrong name for the bridge. When I asked how long it would take to get there, she immediately replied “it depends on the traffic – a good half hour”. She told me that she could see everything in the village from her bungalow window – the church and the tower, the whole village. She collects porcelain dolls. She goes to the bungalow every day and spends several hours there before returning to STCC for the afternoon where she tends to sit in her room. Taxis take her to and from the bungalow. She has a special taxi, able to take the wheelchair. She now goes home three hours everyday.

 

    1. Turning to nutrition and hydration, KK gave the following evidence in her statement:

 

“When left at my bungalow with food I have struggled in being able to reach the food that is left on my table as my table has been filled with lots of different things and often the food gets pushed nearer the back. I have also struggled to drink some of the drinks left out as it has been difficult lifting the drink and moving the straw as my right hand has a tremor. If I was to return to my bungalow I would look forward to planning my meals and writing a shopping list with carers. The cooks at STCC try hard to make meals which I will enjoy, whilst I appreciate their efforts I generally do not like what they cook. I drink “Ensure” nutrition drinks to supplement my diet. I like the taste of these drinks and have asked to be put back on to them. … I get frustrated that STCC’s staff mash my food up and give me a spoon to eat it with. I do not need my food mashed up or a spoon to eat with. I do not think that my diet would be any worse if I returned to the bungalow as I would have meals of choice prepared for me and carers present to assist me with eating.”

    1. I asked her about her food intake during her oral evidence. She said that she could have what she liked for breakfast but usually just had a glass of milk. She repeated in oral evidence that the food was not very good at STCC – “like baby food”. She said that her favourite food was salad. She said that she could make a cup of tea for herself but she does not do so because her legs “are not too good”.

 

    1. As to her future care needs, KK observed as follows in her statement:

 

“I have considered what level of care that I would need whilst at home. I acknowledge that I need assistance in washing including myself, toileting, preparation of food and day-today chores. I anticipate that this could be adequately provided for with four, one hour care visits a day. It may be considered that I need an increased package. I am willing to discuss a suitable package with care professionals. I get on well with my social worker JL and respect his view and opinions. I do not believe that I would need care overnight. Usually I go to bed at 1900hrs and wake at 6 o’clock. Prior to my transfer to STCC I was put to bed by carers at approximately 1900hrs and was visited again at approximately 6 o’clock at which time they would wash and dress me and put me in my recliner chair. This worked well. This routine is similar to that which is in place at STCC.”

In her oral evidence, KK repeated that she would need four visits a day from two carers.

    1. In cross-examination Mr. Dooley asked KK about the cases when she had declined to go on the home visits. She said that on a couple of occasions she had not fancied going back because of the weather. There is a long path up to the bungalow. She was concerned that it might be slippery and that she might be blown over in her wheelchair.

 

  1. In her statement, KK acknowledged that whilst at the bungalow she used the lifeline alarm excessively. She adds: “I understand why this was inappropriate and consider my behaviour in using it so much to have been silly.” In oral evidence, she reiterated that she accepted that she had been using the lifeline in a wrong way. She said “I was nervous”. She added, however, “but I have learnt my lesson.” She was asked what would happen if she fell over. She replied: “If I die on the floor, I die on the floor. I’d rather die in my own bungalow, I really would.”

 

The opinion of all of the professionals was that KK did not have capacity to make decisions – however, the Court rightly identified that it is a factual matter that falls to be determined by the Court and those opinions (even if significant weight must attach) are not determinative.

 

The Court (and I find myself cheering a little as I type this) determined that KK did have capacity, and that therefore the State did not have the power to make her stay in the nursing home if she did not wish to do so.

    1. When considering KK’s capacity to weigh up the options for her future residence, I adopt the approach of Macur J in LBJ v RYJ (supra), namely that it is not necessary for a person to demonstrate a capacity to understand and weigh up every detail of the respective options, but merely the salient factors. In this case, KK may lack the capacity to understand and weigh up every nuance or detail. In my judgment, however, she does understand the salient features, and I do not agree that her understanding is “superficial”. She understands that she needs carers four times a day and that is dependent on them for supporting all activities in daily living. She understands that she needs to eat and drink, although she has views about what she likes and dislikes, and sometimes needs to be prompted. She understands that she may be lonely at home and that it would not be appropriate to use the lifeline merely to have a chat with someone. She understands that if she is on her own at night there may be a greater risk to her physical safety.

 

    1. In weighing up the options, she is taking account of her needs and her vulnerabilities. On the other side of the scales, however, there is the immeasurable benefit of being in her own home. There is, truly, no place like home, and the emotional strength and succour which an elderly person derives from being at home, surrounded by familiar reminders of past life, must not be underestimated. When KK speaks disparagingly of the food in the nursing home, she is expressing a reasonable preference for the personalised care that she receives at home. When she talks of being disturbed by the noise from a distressed resident in an adjoining room, she is reasonably contrasting it with the peace and quiet of her own home.

 

    1. The local authority has attached considerable importance to KK’s excessive use of the lifeline in the first half of 2011. I infer that this was an important factor in the decision to move her back to STCC. It remains a significant factor in the professionals’ assessment of her capacity. To my mind, however, the local authority has not demonstrated that it has fully considered ways in which this issue could be addressed, for example by written notes or reminders, or even by employing night sitters in the initial stage of a return home. I also note that during KK’s daily home visits it has not been reported that she has used the telephone in ways similar to her previous use of the lifeline, although in the latter stages of her period at home prior to admission to care in July 2011 she was apparently using the lifeline excessively during the day as well as at night. Ultimately, however, I am not persuaded that calling an emergency service because one feels the need to speak to someone in the middle of the night, without fully understanding that one has that need or the full implications of making the call, is indicative of a lack of capacity to decide where one lives.

 

    1. Another factor which features strongly in the local authority’s thinking is KK’s failure to eat and drink. Here again, however, I conclude that more could be done to address this issue by written notes and reminders, and by paying greater attention to KK’s likes and dislikes. KK is not the only older person who is fussy about what she eats and drinks.

 

    1. I do not consider the fact that KK needs to be helped about overusing the lifeline, or reminded to eat and drink regularly, carry much weight in the assessment of her capacity. Overall, I found in her oral testimony clear evidence that she has a degree of discernment and that she is not simply saying that she wants to go home without thinking about the consequences. I note in particular that for a period earlier this year she elected not to go on her daily visits to the bungalow because of the inclement weather. This is, to my mind, clear evidence that she has the capacity to understand and weigh up information and make a decision. Likewise, I consider her frank observation that “if I fall over and die on the floor, then I die on the floor” demonstrates to me that she is aware of, and has weighed up, the greater risk of physical harm if she goes home. I venture to think that many and probably most people in her position would take a similar view. It is not an unreasonable view to hold. It does not show that a lack of capacity to weigh up information. Rather it is an example of how different individuals may give different weight to different factors.

 

The Court did, however, and this is illustrative of the problem I have blogged about before, of what the heck a deprivation of liberty really is, determine that KK’s liberty had not been deprived. So even though she did not want to stay at STCC and had had to do so, her liberty was not being deprived.  I echo what’s previously been said by the Courts on the DOLS issue, that it is extremely unfortunate that a law intended to help the most vulnerable in society has now become so impenetrable that no lay person (or indeed many lawyers) can really look at a set of circumstances and call correctly whether there has been a deprivation of liberty or not.

    1. This case illustrates the importance of the fundamental principle enshrined in s. 1(2) of the 2005 Act – that a person must be assumed to have capacity unless it is demonstrated that she lacks it. The burden lies on the local authority to prove that KK lacks capacity to make decisions as to where she lives. A disabled person, and a person with a degenerative condition, is as entitled as anyone else to the protection of this presumption of capacity. The assessment is issue-specific and time specific. In due course, her capacity may deteriorate. Indeed that is likely to happen given her diagnosis. At this hearing, however, the local authority has failed to prove that KK lacks capacity to make decisions as to where she should live.

 

  1. It will now be for the local authority and KK to discuss what happens next. It is not a matter for me to determine or even advise. One course may be for the local authority to put together a proposal for a series of trial overnight visits, with all necessary support, to enable KK to experience being back in the bungalow at night so that she can reach a decision whether she in fact wishes to move back. During that process, the local authority would doubtless be monitoring her capacity, and may of course return to this Court if it concludes that she no longer meets the functional test. But before doing so, it must be careful to ensure that it complies fully with the statute and Code of Practice, taking all practicable steps to enable KK to make decisions for herself.

 

 

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Adult safeguarding investigation

Posted on August 30, 2012 by suesspiciousminds

 

A discussion of Davis & Anor v West Sussex County Council 2012

 

I’m always mindful that I do much less blogging on adult social care than I would like. Child protection work is my day to day bread and butter, so that’s invariably my focus, but I do like to discuss adult social care when I can, and I’ve neglected it recently.

 

So, given a combination of insomnia and this interesting case, the opportunity arises.

 

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2012/2152.html#para26

 

This was a judicial review brought by owners of an adult care home against the Local Authority’s decisions at a safeguarding case conference that 15 allegations made against staff were substantiated and 10 allegations made against staff were “inconclusive” and that the staff should be referred to the Independent Safeguarding Authority and the Nursing and Midwifery Council for possible disciplinary action. To cut to the chase, the claimants won the jr, and the decisions of that case conference were quashed.

 

So what went wrong, and how can that be avoided in the future?

The Claimants main objections to the process, all vigorously challenged by the Defendant, are that;

 

(a) They were not given adequate notice of the allegations made against them so as to allow them a fair opportunity to present their case at the Case Conference. They were only provided with a copy of the very substantial Investigation Report – which set out the allegations for the first time, albeit in unclear form – one working day before the Case Conference.(b) They were not shown the evidence against them.

(c) The Case Conference was not shown relevant evidence generated by the investigation, both for and against them.

(d) They were not permitted, or given an adequate opportunity, to produce relevant evidence to the Case Conference, whether through witnesses or otherwise.

 

and we can already see, by paragraph 3 of the judgment, that this is probably not going to end well for the Local Authority. If those objections are made out, the LA are going to lose, on the article 6 point if nothing else, but almost certainly it would be unreasonable to make determinations that affect the individual livelihoods and career of staff and the financial viability of the organisation as a whole without them having proper opportunity to defend themselves.  (I hasten to add that these claims were vigorously challenged by the Local Authority)

 

The case very helpfully sets out the statutory and binding guidance framework for conducting safeguarding investigations, and would be a useful starting point if one wanted to get to grips with what the duties and requirements are. (The joy of case law is that it often sets out all of the background knowledge in one neat place, saving you hours of leafing through separate sources or even locating what those sources might be)

 

What is interesting about this case is that of course there was a contract between the LA and the claimant for the provision of these services. The claimant ran their case largely on public law grounds  (i.e that this was an administrative decision of a public body which must be taken in a Wednesbury reasonable manner) and the LA largely on contractual grounds (i.e that the issue of investigations, cooperation with them, being bound by recommendations, dispute resolution etc were all contained in the contract, and this was a contract dispute  – and ultimately that the decision was about whether to renew the contract that existed between the Claimant and the LA)

This is interesting, at paragraph 26  (and was the part on @celticknottweet ‘s tweet that led me to dig a little deeper)

It is not the function of this court to decide whether or not abuse took place. The court is concerned with the process by which allegations were investigated. There is some disagreement about the long and complex dealings between the parties over a lengthy period and Mr McGuire QC for West Sussex places emphasis on what he describes as ‘the true factual context’.

 

So, it would not matter if the allegations had merit or substance, the JR court would not be looking at that – they would be looking at whether the process of investigation and opportunity to defend and decision-making process was fair, not whether or not the abuse alleged had taken place. The Court was not conducting a judicial determination of the allegations, merely the process.

 

On that very issue, here is the nub of the judgment  –  the case against the Claimants and their staff was produced in a 22 page report at 7pm on 8th December, for the conference on 10th December. The Claimants request for the conference to be adjourned to allow them time to consider the report and respond in writing was refused.  Two members of staff were refused admission to the conference (the Court accepted that there were legitimate reasons for this) but that decision made on the day, allowed there to be nobody present at the Conference who could speak to the day to day running of the home.  The meeting lasted for 8 hours, and there were “ten on one side and one on the other”  – the Claimant handed a solicitors letter to the Chair who declined to show it to anyone else.

    1. By the middle of 8 December nothing further had been heard from West Sussex about the conference set for 10 December and Mrs Hillary-Warnett sent a reminder to the Council which responded at 4pm confirming that the conference would proceed at 9.30 on 10 December and that a copy of the report would be hand delivered. This was received at 7pm on 8 December. It was 22 pages long alleging abuse against thirteen residents of Nyton House (five of whom had since died).

 

    1. The Claimants submit that the report is incoherent and unclear about what is being alleged against whom. The report referred to the investigations as having been ‘extensive and complex’ and it had taken seven and a half months to produce. However for much of that time the police had been the lead investigator and it had been difficult for West Sussex to carry out the necessary and important work. Of the thirteen residents identified in the report only one had been placed at Nyton House under the Contract. Every relative of a resident at Nyton House that had been questioned was positive about the quality of care provided.

 

    1. Mrs Davis’s evidence, unsurprisingly, is that she was quite unable to deal with the report in the very short time available. On 9 December the Claimants’ solicitors wrote to Mr Yong pointing out the difficulties of holding a Case Conference within the proposed timescale and proposing an adjournment for something over ten days so that Mrs Davis could consider the report and provide a written response within seven to ten days. The solicitors suggested as an alternative that ‘no expectation or pressure’ be put upon Mrs Davis at the next day’s Case Conference to respond and that she should be given the opportunity to provide a detailed written response within seven to ten days. The solicitor could not themselves have attended at such short notice.

 

    1. Mr Yong rejected both options by fax at about 6pm on 9 December.

 

    1. So Mrs Davis attended the Case Conference but took with her for support Mrs Hillary-Warnett, Ms Hillary who was the acting manager and, apparently, a Mr Fieldhouse the son of one of the residents. Mr Fieldhouse apparently soon left. Mrs Hillary-Warnett was refused admission on the basis that she was an alleged perpetrator, a decision understandable in the circumstances. Ms Hillary was also refused admission for similar reasons. So no one remained who was able to speak to day to day management issues at the home. Mrs Davis then attended the meeting alone. She was 77 years old and faced ten members of the safeguarding authorities, eight of whom were employees of West Sussex. Mrs Davis handed up her solicitors’ letter of 9 December but Ms Attwood, the chair declined to consider it or to show it to the others present.

 

    1. The meeting lasted more than 8 hours. It is unclear what documents were available to the panel. Mr McGuire emphasises the extent of the discussion at Mrs Hillary-Warnett’s interview with the police, at which all matters complained of were apparently covered. However there is nothing to suggest that the record of the interview was disclosed or discussed with the panel despite the fact that it must have been one of the factors leading the police to decide to take no action. It does not appear from the record that notes of other interviews were available to the panel either. West Sussex, surprisingly, relies on the fact that Mrs Davis did not herself at the conference ask to have the matter adjourned. But it was or should have been obvious that she wanted it adjourned because her solicitors had written to say so and Mrs Davis had reminded the meeting of the letter. Ms Attwood points to the fact that Mrs Davis started by making it clear that she was going to follow her solicitors’ advice to make no comment but then chose to go on and comment on a number of occasions. There was no indication that West Sussex saw anything amiss in relying on what this elderly lady went on to say, despite knowing of her solicitors’ advice. During the lunch break which according to Ms Attwood was ‘relaxed’ Mrs Davis made a remark to her informally. Ms Attwood “suggested … that she share these comments with other attendees when the meeting reconvened and she agreed and … repeated this statement towards the end of the meeting”. This was unfair.

 

    1. West Sussex was aware of Mrs Davis’s limited role as owner not manager of Nyton House. The chair refused an adjournment, gave Mrs Davis no proper opportunity to prepare for the meeting, refused even to consider her solicitors’ letter, continued for eight hours knowing that she was an elderly lady, where the meeting was ten on one side and one on the other and where even the informality of a brief lunch break was abused. Nevertheless conclusions were drawn about Mrs Davis’s credibility and her fitness to own a care home. These were in part based on detailed matters relating to individual carers and patients (see paragraph 18 of Ms Attwood’s statement) which West Sussex knew or should have known were outside Mrs Davis’s knowledge given the impossibility of looking into all these allegations in such an absurdly short time and its decision (for reasons which were of themselves legitimate ) to exclude from the meeting those who would have had the answers . West Sussex, as Mr McGuire put it, considered that Mrs Davis had ‘made a long series of admissions’.

 

    1. I again remind myself that the prime object of the investigation was to protect vulnerable adults and to prevent abuse not to give particular consideration to Mrs Davis. But her treatment at and around the meeting was deplorable.

 

    1. The Case Conference concluded that fourteen allegations of abuse were substantiated and ten were ‘inconclusive’. An allegation of ‘institutional abuse’ was found to substantiated based amongst other things on an ‘incestuous management and ownership structure’, an odd description of a family business. The conference imposed 45 ‘actions’ mainly on Nyton House. They also, referred, with potentially devastating professional and personal consequences, Ms Hillary, Ms Bidwell and Ms Hillary-Warnett to the ISA and NMC.

 

    1. The policy required minutes of the Case Conference and its outcomes to be sent to the Claimants within five days but these were not received within that time but delivered to the Claimants thirteen days later on 23 December with a request to respond within seven days (which would have been 31 December) shorter than the ten days permitted by the policy.

 

  1. It is not necessary for my decision for me to evaluate the quality of the decisions taken at the Case Conference but, having looked at the relevant material it seems to me that the submissions that there were serious flaws in the Defendants’ approach, for the reasons set out in paragraph 89 of Mr Purchase’s written argument, are well-founded. The object of the Case Conference was primarily to investigate allegations in the interests of protecting vulnerable adults, not to make determinations about Mrs Davis or the Case Conference and so it is understandable to a degree that West Sussex did not see the vulnerability of Mrs Davies as a concern.

 

and then this

 

52. West Sussex had started to investigate the allegations in April 2010 and, partly as a result of the police intervention, had not reached or communicated its conclusion orally until 10 December. It had not communicated its conclusions in writing until 22 December. It is hard to see how a responsible council genuinely seeking the views of the Claimants could have expected them to respond within a ludicrously short timescale set to expire on 31 December in the middle of what, for so many, is the Christmas and New Year break. In the event the council extended the deadline to 21 January 2011 and on 24 January the Claimants’ solicitors submitted a response running to 45 pages with a further eleven pages of attachments.

 

[This is the bit in the judgment, where if you’re for the Local Authority, you know beyond any doubt that you have lost on the public law case, your only hope is that the Judge agrees with your primary case that this is a contractual dispute, not a public law dispute. You are probably not optimistic about the prospects of that, at this point]

 

    1. Mr Purchase contends that the decisions of the Case Conference were made in the exercise of a public function. It was attended and conducted by members of public bodies carrying out their various statutory functions and to protect residents of care homes from abuse. Those functions are controlled by governmental guidance and published local policy and do not derive from contract. The point is starkly illustrated by the fact that only one of the residents who are alleged to have been abused was placed at Nyton House by the local authority under the Contract. He submits that while there is a contractual dispute following on from the allegations of abuse and the action taken by West Sussex following the decisions at the Case Conference there is no challenge to the Defendant’s exercise of its contractual rights in stark contrast with the facts in Caerphilly (a case in which Weaver was not cited and, which Mr Purchase argues, is wrong).

 

    1. I follow the guidance given by the Court of Appeal in Supportways and Weaver. In Supportways the question was whether a review which led to the decision not to renew a contract was a public law matter. As I read the judgments an applicant for a judicial review who has a contract with the body sued must establish a relevant and sufficient nexus between the matters complained of and the alleged unlawful exercise of public law powers. The caution about permitting a public law remedy does not apply to the same extent if the issue is not, as Neuburger LJ put it, ‘fundamentally contractual in nature’. The issues here are not fundamentally contractual or, to borrow the words of Elias LJ, ‘in the nature of a private act’.

 

    1. West Sussex responded to allegations by starting an investigation under its regulatory powers which was to lead to findings of abuse of thirteen residents at Nyton House only one of whom was there under a contract with West Sussex. The original complaint led swiftly to the exercise of the contractual power of suspension about which the Claimants’ solicitors corresponded. At different points in the investigation notices were given under the Contract. The Claimants’ solicitors’ letters referred to contractual rights, as well as to those under public law but there are also letters from West Sussex indicating that the two are seen as separate matters. When the decisions now challenged were taken at the Case Conference in December 2010 Default Notices under the Contract were soon given and one of the West Sussex employees present at the conference Mr Ian McCarthney attended because his responsibilities were for management of contractual matters. But it is plain that the investigation would have been carried out whether or not a contract had been in place between the parties as would the process of conference and decision-although the actions to be taken as a result would have differed. West Sussex issued Default Notices under the contract following the case conference but this was one of a series of steps consequent upon the decisions. It seems to me that West Sussex was rightly and primarily concerned with investigating allegations of abuse under its legal powers.

 

    1. The contractual issues were ancillary. There is no direct challenge to the contract in this case. The Claimants originally sought to quash the Default Notice, a grievance for which a private law remedy was available. Their other complaints are some distance from the contract. The contractual remedies would have been inadequate because these are essentially public law claims. The decisions were not about whether or not to continue a contract or to change its terms, they were about whether or not abuse had been established and if so what the consequences would be in a number of areas, only one of which was the contract. The Claimants are trying to clear their names from what they see as unfair findings of abuse by West Sussex (but not by the other public agencies concerned) and protect their staff from what they see as unfair referrals to professional bodies. In essence these are public law not contractual concerns.

 

  1. When taken together the factors cumulatively establish sufficient public flavour, as it was put in Weaver, to make the process of investigation and decision a public function distinct from the contractual relationship. So this defence fails.

 

These investigations are hard for a Local Authority. They have a duty of care to the people placed in these homes, and once the police conclude their investigation, there is obviously a time pressure to take appropriate safeguarding action. But in a case such as this, where the police were investigating from April to December, having a meeting with only one working day for the organisation under investigation to respond to the report was always going to be problematic.  I suspect in retrospect  (a place where wisdom comes easily) there is regret in not having accepted the request to adjourn for 10 days.

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“A labyrinth of DoLs”

Posted on April 16, 2012 by suesspiciousminds

 An imaginary judgment

 

(I am extremely grateful in the construction of the legal framework of this judgment to Lord Justice Wilson’s careful and precise analysis of the law in RE P and Q 2010 – often known as the MIG and MEG case. Almost everything in this that you think is well-written was written by Lord Justice Wilson, and everything shabby and feeble is my own)

 

 The Court is today dealing with an application by those representing the parents of a young man named L, to the effect that his accommodation in the Minos Taurus care facility amounts to a Deprivation of Liberty under the Mental Capacity Act 2005, and that as this has been done without authority, the facility, and the Local Authority who placed him there are in breach of Article 5 of the Human Rights Act 1998 in that his liberty is being restricted without lawful excuse.

 

The Local Authority and the owners of Minos Taurus – Mr Ian K Harris and his dad, Ellis, contend that there is no restriction on L’s liberty and that there is an open door that L can leave by at any time and a path that can be followed to the outside world should he wish to leave at any time; and that thus L is effectively remaining in the placement of his own wish.

 

Matters are complicated when the Court looks, as I am strenuously urged to, beyond the face value of that statement and at the reality of the layout of the Minos Taurus care home. The care home has a front door, which is locked at all times. Staff members have a key, and visitors will be admitted, but residents are not able to freely enter or exit through that door. That much is common ground between the parties.

 

The rear door is indeed, unlocked at all times and any resident is free to go through it and staff would not attempt to prevent or discourage a resident from doing so.

However, emerging from that back door does not grant the resident immediate access to the public highway or the world at large, but rather to the grounds of the Minos Taurus home, which are over two acres in size. I have been shown aerial photography taken by the applicants of those grounds and it is plain that what has been constructed is an array of hedges, constructed in such a way that only one path moves from the entrance to the exit.

The hedges themselves are impenetrable, and could not be scaled without considerable difficulty, being both prickly and twelve feet in height.

In short, what lies at the rear of Minos Taurus can best be described as a labyrinth. The entrance to this labyrinth is the back door of the physical Minos Taurus building and the exit is to the public footpath that runs outside the rear of the property. There is no physical gate, or barrier to that exit.

 Minos Taurus therefore contend that L, or any other resident, would simply have to walk a path between the entrance and the exit. If they walked that path, which they are free to do at any time of the day or night, nothing would prevent them from reaching the footpath and thus leaving the land owned by Minos Taurus. Thus, there is no deprivation of liberty.

I note that they contend that describing their grounds as a labyrinth is pejorative and that it is, in reality ‘a restful and soothing arrangement of hedges in a classical form’.

 They are to be admired for their chutzpah in that submission, but I find that quite the simplest of this entire tangled and byzantine case to unpick. The grounds are laid out in the form of a maze (I note in passing that whilst I may, as counsel did throughout, flit between the term maze and labyrinth, that what we are dealing with here is a maze – since it has an entrance and exit and branching paths, whereas a labyrinth leads to the centre and is not intended to be difficult or puzzling to navigate).

I am satisfied that the applicant’s claim that the grounds of Minos Taurus are intentionally laid out as a maze, and that it is not a merely coincidental happenstance or an intention to create a geometrically and horticulturally pleasing arrangement which simply happened to also take the form of a maze. Nor is it a homage to Hampden Court, or the many other notable horticultural efforts that are set out in glossy photographs in Section J of the bundle. Whilst those photographs have indeed been soothing to consider and admire, they have not assisted me as Minos Taurus had hoped they might.

The grounds are laid out in the form of a maze and this has been a deliberate intention on the part of Minos Taurus.

L’s family contend, that L, being a person who lacks capacity to make decisions in his own regard, is incapable of navigating a maze or labyrinth, and that whilst theoretically, he is free to leave at any time, in reality he is imprisoned by this maze and his liberty is just as restricted as if he were blocked by a locked and barred door.

They state that it is of significance that their Freedom of Information request gleaned that :-

 (a) Since the construction of the maze, no member of staff has chosen to enter by the back door rather than the front

(b) Since the construction of the maze, no resident has left the home by way of the back door.

(c) All residents who have left the home have done so by the front door, which had been unlocked for them by staff.

Turning now to the law, which one might rightly muse is almost as impenetrable as the hedge and with as many twists and turns as the construction in question. The issue whether the arrangements for L amount to a deprivation of his liberty and whether the arrangements engage Article 5 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms 1950.

Article 5 provides: “1 Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person. No one shall be deprived of his liberty save in the following cases and in accordance with a procedure prescribed by law – … (e) the lawful detention … of persons of unsound mind …; … 4 Everyone who is deprived of his liberty by … detention shall be entitled to take proceedings by which the lawfulness of his detention shall be decided speedily by a court and his release ordered if the detention is not lawful.”

 The practical effect of a conclusion that the arrangements for L amount to a deprivation of his liberty is to be found in the valuable right provided by paragraph 4 of Article 5. For in that event his right would be to take court proceedings for a decision in relation to the lawfulness of their detention The paragraph would impose a duty on the court itself periodically, again probably at least annually, to review the continued necessity for the arrangements which deprive him of his liberty, albeit perhaps only on paper unless requested otherwise: see Re BJ (Incapacitated Adult) [2009] EWHC 3310 (Fam), [2010] 1 FLR 1373, at [26] – [28]. The court’s review would probably again require independent representation of him.

It is not, therefore, a merely academic question, but one which goes to the heart of L’s rights. I shall not go into details of the nature of L’s problems, suffice to say that his day to day functioning is approximately that of a five year old child and that it is beyond dispute and accepted by all parties to these proceedings that he lacks capacity to make decisions for all matters relevant to these proceedings pursuant to section 2 of the Mental Capacity Act 2005. There is expert evidence, undisputed, to that effect.

 L came into the Minos Taurus care home as a voluntary patient, his family having brought him there for a period of respite. They say that they had no idea that having taken him there, they did not have the power to discharge him. Although he is free to leave whenever he wishes, he is, they say, prevented from doing so by the practical barriers that have been put in place.

As indicated earlier, Minos Taurus and the Local Authority who are assisting in the funding of L’s placement there, and supporting his remaining in that placement, are of the view that L can leave the placement at any time and that there is a route or path which can be followed which is completely unimpeded to L, if he chose to follow it. Minos Taurus have indicated that if the Local Authority determined that L should leave the home by the front door, or were to cease funding the placement, they would facilitate L leaving by the front door.

The European Court of Human Rights (“the ECtHR”) has made clear that a deprivation of liberty has three elements:

(a) “the objective element of a person’s confinement to a certain limited place for a not negligible length of time”: Storck v. Germany (2005) 43 EHRR 96, at [74];

(b) the “additional subjective element [that] they have not validly consented to the confinement in question”: the Storck case, also at [74]; and

 (c) the confinement must be “imputable to the State”: the Storck case, at [89].

That is not disputed by any of the parties. The critical issue that is in dispute is whether, as a matter of fact, L is confined to a certain limited place, or whether he is not. I am invited by L’s family to reword the test as being whether L is confined to a certain limited place or whether he is free to come and go as he chooses, but I decline to replace the construction that has been carefully arrived at by the ECtHR in Storck with a different formulation. It is not incumbent on the State to demonstrate that L is free to come and go as he chooses, but to refute the claim that he is confined to a certain limited place for a not negligible length of time. The classic exposition of the nature of the enquiry into the objective element, on which no doubt has been cast for 30 years, is that of the ECtHR in Guzzardi v. Italy (1981) EHRR 333, at [92] – [93], as follows: “… the starting point must be his concrete situation and account must be taken of a whole range of criteria such as the type, duration, effects and manner of implementation of the measure in question … The difference between deprivation of and restriction upon liberty is nonetheless merely one of degree or intensity, and not one of nature or substance … the process of classification into one or other of these categories sometimes proves to be no easy task in that some borderline cases are a matter of pure opinion …”

These are prescient words indeed and ones that have survived the last three decades better than tastes in literature, music, art or fashion. It certainly is no easy task to determine the clear bright line that separates a restriction of liberty from a deprivation of liberty. One is reminded of the philosophical debate about a pile of stones, and one stone being removed at a time, and at what point there ceases to be a pile.

To the layperson it would seem a relatively easy task to determine whether objectively someone is deprived of their liberty. They would probably begin with asking the question “What’s stopping them from leaving?”  , but there is no question no matter how simple or blindingly obvious the answer that cannot be obfuscated by the combined efforts of Parliament, the judiciary and the focussed minds of the Bar.

In relation to the objective element there are two more recent decisions of the ECtHR of great importance.

The first decision is HL v. UK (2005) 81 BMLR 131;  Mr HL was an incapable 48-year-old man who was autistic, unable to speak and had a history of self-harm. For 30 years prior to 1994 he had been an inpatient in Bournewood Hospital; and for the final seven of them he had been in its Intensive Behavioural Unit. Then, in 1994, without being formally discharged, he was moved into the home of paid carers. In July 1997, following an incident of self-harm at a day-care centre, he was readmitted to the unit at the hospital and he remained there for four months, whereupon he was returned to the carers. For the first three of those months he was an informal patient, i.e. not compulsorily detained there under the Mental Health Act 1983; and such was the period during which, so the ECtHR held, he had been deprived of his liberty in breach of Article 5. Thus did the court identify “the Bournewood gap” in our legal framework for control over the deprivation of liberty in the case of an incapable person effected otherwise than pursuant to the Act of 1983; and Parliament sought to fill the gap by making insertions into the Mental Capacity Act 2005 which, by s.4A(5) and Schedule A1, set up a framework for such control in the case of a person receiving care or treatment in a hospital or a care home and which, by s.4A(1) and (3), rendered any other such deprivation lawful only if made pursuant to a court order that such was in her (or his) best interests. In its submissions in the case of HL the UK government had laid considerable emphasis on the fact that Mr HL had been compliant with his return to live in the unit and had never attempted to leave it nor expressed the wish to do so. But the court held, at [90], that, in that Mr HL was incapable, his compliance was not of central importance. The fact was that, irrespective of whether his ward was locked or lockable, he had not been free to leave the unit: [91] and [92]. The court said, at [91]: “the Court considers the key factor in the present case to be that the health care professionals treating and managing [Mr HL] exercised complete and effective control over his care and movements from 22 July 1997, when he presented acute behavioural problems, to 29 October 1997, when he was compulsorily detained.”

 

The second decision is the case of Storck cited above. A young woman aged 18 was placed by her father in a locked ward of a private psychiatric clinic and she remained there for 20 months. Very strong medication was administered to her, at times by force. On a number of occasions she attempted to flee from the clinic and was prevented from doing so by being fettered. Once she succeeded in escaping and the police forcibly returned her there. She was unable to maintain regular social contact with persons outside the clinic. The ECtHR held that all three elements of a deprivation of liberty were present and that, in respect of the objective element, the case was a fortiori that of HL.

 

In the case of RE P (known as MIG) and Q (known as MEG) 2010, the Court of Appeal determined that there were some important factors to be considered when determining whether there was objectively a deprivation of liberty.

 1. A person’s happiness, as such, is not relevant in determining whether there has been a deprivation of liberty.

 2. However, an objection is relevant, even where a person lacks capacity. If they do not want to be in a place and they object, there will be conflict. At the very least there will be arguments and they will suffer the stress of having their argument overruled. This would be a factor which could be properly taken into account when determining if a person’s liberty were being deprived, rather than restricted.

3. From the relevance of objections and also of the lack of them, it is logical to move to the relevance of medication and also of the lack of it . The administration to a person of medication, at any rate of antipsychotic drugs and other tranquilisers, is always a pointer towards the existence of the objective element: for it suppresses her liberty to express herself as she would otherwise wish. Indeed, if the administration of it is attended by force, its relevance is increased. Furthermore, in that objections may be highly relevant, medication which has the effect of suppressing them may be relevant to an equally high degree. But again, conversely, the absence of medication is a pointer in the other direction.

4. The purpose of the arrangements under scrutiny can be relevant.

 5. the relative normality, or otherwise of the arrangements under scrutiny can be relevant

 6. an enquiry into the residential arrangements and the degree of outside social contact. “Whether a certain situation constitutes a deprivation of liberty may depend on the living conditions of the person concerned and the degree of freedom he or she enjoyed otherwise”: “The European System for the Protection of Human Rights,” by Macdonald, Matscher and Petzold, 1993, 289.

I propose to analyse the case on the basis of those principles, to form an objective view of whether, as a preliminary issue the first of the three limbs of Starck are made out. Has there been the objective element of a person’s confinement to a certain limited place for a not negligible length of time ?

 

I am however, before conducting that exercise, mindful of the following authorities , and indeed that the Court of Appeal in Re P and Q determined that there was NO deprivation of liberty in that case and this body of caselaw strives to convince me that there is far more to the objective question that considering the commonsense formulation that an ordinary person would use “What’s stopping them from leaving?” , in that these cases illustrate that locked doors, tranquiliser medication and physical restraint can all, in certain circumstances be deployed to stop a person leaving somewhere without his liberty being deprived. 

  (I wonder, in an idle moment, whether a Judge in a civil trial to determine a tort of False Imprisonment, would wrestle for even a moment with the issue of whether someone who was drugged, locked up or sat on was being prevented from leaving, but that is by the by)

 

RE  C (BY THE OFFICIAL SOLICITOR) v (1) BLACKBURN WITH DARWEN BOROUGH COUNCIL (2) A CARE HOME (3) BLACKBURN WITH DARWEN TEACHING CARE TRUST (2011) [2011] EWHC 3321 (Fam) Where an individual who was living in a care home with locked doors was not considered by the High Court to be deprived of his liberty.

 

The Honourable Mr Justice Peter Jackson commented here, and they are sentiments which I would not only echo, but shout into the Grand Canyon via a megaphone and perhaps even go so far as to embark upon a process of chiselling these words into Mount Rushmore:- 

 It is a truly unhappy state of affairs that the law governing the fundamental rights and welfare of incapacitated people should be so complex. As this case shows, its intricacies challenge the understanding of professionals working in the field and are completely inaccessible to those for whose benefit the legislation has been devised, including those with a relatively high level of understanding, such as Mr C. This judgment, while keeping citation from statute, regulation, codes of practice and reported cases to the necessary minimum, still remains more focused on technical issues than I would like

Bravo.

 I wish that my own meagre contribution to the law in this regard could add illumination, but I fear it is likely to do little other than complicate matters still further.

 I am also referred to the case of CHESHIRE WEST & CHESTER COUNCIL v P (BY HIS LITIGATION FRIEND THE OFFICIAL SOLICITOR) (2011) [2011] EWCA Civ 1257 In which the Court of Appeal determined that restrictive measures taken in relation to a man who lacked capacity did not amount to a deprivation of his liberty.

HELD: (1) After reviewing the relevant authorities, the court identified the following factors which were likely to be significant in the type of deprivation of liberty cases coming before the Court of Protection: (a) the starting point was the “concrete situation”, taking account of a range of criteria such as the type, duration, effects and manner of implementation of the measure in question (see paras 32-33, 188, 102 of judgment); (b) deprivation of liberty had to be distinguished from restraint because restraint alone was not deprivation of liberty (paras 23, 102); (c) account had to be taken of the individual’s whole situation and context was crucial, Guzzardi v Italy (A/39) (1981) 3 E.H.R.R. 333 and Engel v Netherlands (A/22) (1979-80) 1 E.H.R.R. 647 applied, Secretary of State for the Home Department v JJ [2007] UKHL 45, [2008] 1 A.C. 385 followed (paras 32-35, 102); (d) mere lack of capacity to consent to living arrangements could not in itself create a deprivation of liberty and the fact that a domestic setting could involve a deprivation of liberty did not mean that it often would, Surrey CC v CA [2010] EWHC 785 (Fam), [2011] M.H.L.R. 108 approved (paras 27-28, 41-59, 102-103); (e) it was legitimate to have regard both to the objective “reason” for a placement and treatment and also the objective “purpose”, Austin v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis [2009] UKHL 5, [2009] 1 A.C. 564 followed (paras 60-75, 102); (f) subjective motives or intentions had only limited relevance since an improper motive or intention might have the effect that what would otherwise not be a deprivation of liberty was, for that very reason, a deprivation whilst a good motive or intention could not render innocuous what would otherwise be a deprivation of liberty (paras 74-77, 102); (g) it was always relevant to evaluate and assess the ‘relative normality’ of the situation, Secretary of State for the Home Department v JJ and others followed (paras 78-97, 102); (h) the assessment had to take account of the particular capabilities of the person concerned since what might be a deprivation of liberty for one person may not be for another (paras 92, 97, 102); (i) in most contexts the relevant comparator was the ordinary able bodied adult but not in the kind of cases that came before the Family Division and the Court of Protection, concerning children and adults with disabilities whose lives were dictated by their own cognitive and other limitations (paras 86, 102); (j) in such cases, the comparator was an adult of similar age with the same capabilities as the adult concerned, affected by the same condition or suffering the same inherent mental and physical disabilities and limitations. In the case of a child, the comparator was a child of the same age and development, Surrey CC v CA [2011] EWCA Civ 190, [2011] 2 F.L.R. 583 applied (paras 86-97, 102). (2) In the instant case, the judge had not compared P’s situation with the kind of life he would have been leading as someone with his disabilities and difficulties in a normal family setting. There was nothing to show that the life he was living there was significantly different from the kind of life that anyone with those difficulties could normally expect to lead, whatever kind of setting they were living in. On the contrary, there was a strong degree of normality in his life, assessed by reference to the relevant comparator (paras 105-112). The judge’s reasoning in relation to the measures applied to P from time to time was equally problematic. The measures involved the kind of occasional restraint that anyone caring for P in any setting would have to adopt from time to time. The finger sweep was obviously intrusive but had to be looked at in context. It was little different from what any properly attentive parent would do if a young child was chewing something unpleasant or potentially harmful. It involved a degree of restraint but that was far removed from anything approaching a deprivation of liberty. P’s care plan did not involve a deprivation of his liberty (paras 113-117).

 

The Minos Taurus unit, and the Local Authority urge that I exercise caution before determining that the arrangements for L amount to a deprivation of his liberty. They contend that :-

1. There is an unlocked door through which L may leave at any time.

2. L’s needs are being met in the unit

3. L is not making attempts to leave through the unlocked door. Setting aside whether he could navigate the maze (about which they make no concessions) he has not attempted to step out of the physical building and into the grounds at the rear of the building.

 4. L does attend social functions and some educational/play facilities outside of the unit and has a quality of life comparable to that which persisted before his admission 

5. L is not on any medication

6. L has not been the subject of any restraint

7. There are no entries in any of the records of L objecting to the placement, or of wishing to leave. It is plain that he is asking for his family and making positive comments about them and his time with them.

On the evidence that has been placed before me, there is nothing to counteract these facts and I have to find that these contentions are all made out.

 

Set against that,  I am satisfied that the purpose of the arrangements, in having a maze built in the grounds of the building and there being an open door leading into that maze is in order to provide the illusion of a person being free to leave. This illusion does not sit well with me, leaving as it does, an indelible impression of an attempt to circumvent the need to make the application to detain a person using the Mental Capacity Act, which application could be challenged.

I am also satisfied that none of the residents at Minos Taurus, who are there on a “voluntary” basis are capable of negotiating or navigating that maze successfully and that within a few short minutes of being in the maze unaccompanied they would become fearful, lost and no doubt calling for staff to help them. That is not an indication of them consenting to be in the home or wishing to remain there, but the reality of them being simply incapable of negotiating the obstacle that has been placed in their path by Mr Ian K Harris and his father, Ellis.

This, however, is the only matter that I can set against the 7 positive factors listed above to indicate that there might be a degree of deprivation of liberty rather than restriction of it.  I do not feel able to imbue that matter, grave as it is, with sufficient weight to tip the scales against those 7 positive factors.

Much as this conclusion might leave a bad taste in my mouth, the construction of the maze being a clear device to circumvent suggestion that L and his fellow residents are deprived of their liberty, I am in difficulties on the authorities to reach the objective conclusion that L’s family invite me to make. Given that some of the authorities find that locked doors and physical restraint need not amount to an objective deprivation of liberty, and that those factors are not present in this case, I am driven by the authorities and an analysis of the law to find that there is no such deprivation of liberty.

However, my conclusion is that L would like to have a member of his family to visit him in the unit and to walk with him in the grounds. Should they happen to wish to wander in the maze, and should they happen to find their way out (perhaps with the benefit of the aerial photography that can be found at G42 of the Court bundle) then that might be a coincident outcome.

If the unit were to refuse to allow L to be visited by his family and to walk with them in the grounds, or to refuse to allow L to leave by the exit of the maze, should he find his way there, then I would be minded to find that a deprivation of liberty had occurred at that point. Indeed, I determine that if they were minded to do so, they should make the relevant application to give them authority to deprive L of his liberty to walk in the garden with his family.

 The same would be true of any of the other residents of Minos Taurus, and I am happy for this judgment to be published and made available to the family members of all other residents of the unit.

I apologise that my solution and judgment in this case is more akin to the Gordian Knot than Ariadne’s ball of thread, but I trust that it will meet with some satisfaction in at least some of the participants of this fascinating piece of litigation.

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We’re only making plans for Nigel

Posted on April 2, 2012 by suesspiciousminds

 

 

Inherent jurisdiction and vulnerable (yet competent adults)

 

 

 

DL v A Local Authority and Others  [2012] EWCA Civ 253

 

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2012/253.html

 

 

 

A fascinating case, and one which deserves to be analysed by someone with greater skill and expertise in adult social care law than I possess. But I am interested in it, and felt it was worthy of discussion.

 

It deals fundamentally, with the tension between individual autonomy and protection of vulnerable persons; and of whether there is a bright line to be drawn between when the State can tell a person that they can’t make that decision because it is not in their best interests to do so, and where if so, that bright line is to be drawn.

 

Many people might have thought that the introduction of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 settled that once and for all :-  the State, and ergo the Court, can replace a person’s decision with one that is in their best interests if, and only if:-

 

(i)            they are a minor, when the principles of the Children Act 1989 apply

(ii)          they are suffering from a mental illness or disorder sufficient to justify intervention under the Mental Health Act

(iii)         they lack capacity to make that decision, when the principles of the Mental Capacity Act apply.

 

 

But nothing much in law is settled “once and for all”   (with the honourable exception perhaps of precisely what words one can or cannot use when advertising carbolic smoke balls)

 

And the Court of Appeal have been grappling with the issue of whether a person who has capacity, is not a child, is not mentally disordered but is nonetheless “vulnerable” can have their autonomy restricted by use of the inherent jurisdiction of the Court.

 

The facts of the case are relatively straightforward, and I’ll quote them from the judgment  (the bolding is mine) :-

 

  1. For the purposes of the determination of the legal point the parties have helpfully agreed a set of “assumed facts” which formed the basis of the case before Mrs Justice Theis and before this court. I set them out below in full but in doing so make it clear that these assumed facts are not agreed by DL as being true and are, in fact, in the main denied by him.

“Mr and Mrs L are an elderly married couple. He is 85: she is 90. They live with their son, DL, (who is in his fifties) in a house which is owned by Mr. L. Mrs L is physically disabled. She receives support by way of direct payments and twice daily visits from health and social care professionals commissioned and paid for by the Claimant local authority under its statutory community care duties. At the time that these proceedings were commenced, the local authority accepts, for the purpose of this hearing, that neither Mr nor Mrs L (nor, for that matter, DL) was incapable, by reason of any impairment of or disturbance in the functioning of the mind or brain, of managing their own affairs, and, in particular, both Mr and Mrs L appeared capable of deciding what their relationship with their son should be and, in particular, whether he should continue to live under the same roof as themselves.

 

Mr L has, however, been recently assessed as lacking capacity to make his own decisions and a decision is soon to be reached whether he has requisite capacity to litigate. Mr. L is no longer residing at the family home and it is not known if or when he will return to the family home. Nevertheless the need to resolve the preliminary issue remains and for that purpose it is assumed that both ML and GRL have capacity as to residence and contact with DL for the purposes of s 2 of the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

 

The local authority is concerned about DL’s alleged conduct towards his parents, which is said to be aggressive, and which, on occasions, has resulted, it is said, in physical violence by DL towards his parents. The local authority has documented incidents going back to 2005 which, it says, chronicle DL’s behaviour and which include physical assaults, verbal threats, controlling where and when his parents may move in the house, preventing them from leaving the house, and controlling who may visit them, and the terms upon which they may visit them, including health and social care professionals providing care and support for Mrs L. There have also been consistent reports that DL is seeking to coerce Mr L into transferring the ownership of the house into DL’s name and that he has also placed considerable pressure on both his parents to have Mrs L moved into a care home against her wishes.

 

The local authority has brought these proceedings to protect Mr and Mrs. L from DL. It has considered (and rejected) using the criminal law. It has considered (and rejected) an application to the Court of Protection under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA 2005). It has considered (and rejected) an application for an ASBO (an anti-social behaviour order) under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. It has considered (and rejected) an application under section 153A of the Housing Act 1996.

 

The local authority acknowledges that, on the information currently available to it, neither Mr nor Mrs. L lacks the capacity to take proceedings on behalf of themselves or each other by reason of any impairment of or disturbance in the functioning of the mind or brain. The local authority recognises that Mrs L, in particular, wishes to preserve her relationship with DL and does not want any proceedings taken against him. Furthermore, the local authority acknowledges that whilst Mr. L is more critical of DL’s behaviour, it remains unclear as to whether he, Mr L, would wish to take steps in opposition to his wife’s wishes.

 

 

When this case came before Lord Justice Wall in October 2010, he made injunctions under the Inherent Jurisdiction to safeguard Mr and Mrs L from the alleged domestic abuse from their son; notwithstanding that they did not apply for such an order and did not want that protection and were happy for their son to live with them.

 

Whether you think that is right or not, depends largely on where you stand on the personal autonomy versus protection of the vulnerable debate.

 

The legal issue for the Court of Appeal was framed in admirably concise prose by Mrs Justice Theis :-

 

“The central issue in this case is whether, and to what extent, the court’s inherent jurisdiction is available to make declarations and, if necessary, put protective measures in place in relation to vulnerable adults who do not fall within the MCA but who are, or are reasonably believed to be, for some reason deprived of the capacity to make the relevant decision, or disabled from making a free choice, or incapacitated or disabled from giving or expressing a real and genuine consent by reason of such things as constraint, coercion, undue influence or other vitiating factor.”

 

The hearing in the Court of Appeal makes for interesting reading and some very strong arguments were marshalled on both sides.

 

For the appellant, DL, represented by Ms Nathalie Lieven QC  (someone I am sadly not familiar with, but without any doubt on reading this, a considerable force to be reckoned with and a piercing mind)  :-

 

  1. The principal arguments deployed by Miss Lieven in this court can be summarised as follows:

a) The only authority prior to the introduction of the MCA 2005 which indicated that the inherent jurisdiction extended to adults who maintained their mental capacity is limited to one case, namely Re SA. Re SA was not supported by any earlier authority and is therefore to be seen as an isolated decision which is insufficient to bear the weight now put upon it by subsequent decisions, including that of Theis J in this case;

b) The MCA 2005 was clearly intended to provide a comprehensive statutory code for those who lacked capacity;

c) If a case, such as the present, does not fall within the provisions of the MCA 2005, then there is no jurisdiction for the court to make orders controlling the lives of those who do not lack capacity within the meaning of the 2005 Act;

d) To the degree that there is any remaining inherent jurisdiction in this field, it is limited to providing a short period for the individual to be allowed to make his/her own decision, and if appropriate the provision of advice.

 

  1. In developing her submissions Miss Lieven understandably stressed the premium which the courts have habitually attached to the right of autonomy enjoyed by every individual in a democratic society. She relied upon the words of Lord Reid in S v McC: W v W [1972] AC 25:

“English law goes to great lengths to protect a person of full age and capacity from interference with his personal liberty. We have too often seen freedom disappear in other countries not only by coups d’état but by gradual erosion: and often it is the first step that counts. So it would be unwise to make even minor concessions.”

 

[From my own distorted and unreasonable perspective, if you don’t feel even a tiny urge to stand up and applaud when reading Lord Reid’s words, I would raise an eyebrow at your decision. Were the world ever to lose all reason and appoint me to the higher echelons of the judiciary, deployment of that quotation in a relevant context would be a “Win the Game button”]

 

 

The difficulty for that case, as is obliquely noted in the Court of Appeal decision, is that it invites the Court of Appeal to conclude that Judges can’t be trusted to exercise powers with restraint and a great deal of caution, and they call upon a number of examples where such restraint and caution has been deployed to the advantage of the vulnerable.

 

And for the Local Authority respondent, represented by Paul Bowen  (I note that in this case, both parties had what might be described as ‘thankless briefs’  – one of them trying to justify the Local Authority’s right to interfere in the lives of people who had capacity to make their own decisions, even if those decisions might appear wrong to others, and the other trying to justify that even if the Court felt these adults were vulnerable and needed protection, the letter of the law forebade it)

 

  1. The appeal is opposed by Mr Paul Bowen on behalf of the local authority. He submits that the appeal is based on the false premise that the inherent jurisdiction argued for would permit the court to override the decision of any competent adult and thereby ignore their fundamental right to autonomy. Mr Bowen submits that the case is far more narrowly based than that and is limited to those individuals who fall outside the MCA 2005 but who nevertheless have not given, or cannot give, a ‘true consent’ to a particular aspect of their lives not as a result of mental incapacity but for some other reason, such as the undue influence of a third party. Mr Bowen’s submissions have therefore been to delineate the extent of the jurisdiction so that it only covers those cases where it is necessary for the court to act because a person’s capacity to make decisions for themselves has been overborne by circumstances other than those covered by the MCA 2005.
  1. Mr Bowen has the substantial benefit of being able to rely upon the analysis and conclusions of Munby J in Re SA and, understandably, much of his argument was designed to highlight and support those matters. In addition he drew attention to the fact that Parliament was expressly aware of the concept of ‘elder abuse’ during the pre-legislative scrutiny process. The MCA 2005 makes no express provision limiting or extinguishing the use of the inherent jurisdiction. Mr Bowen therefore submits that Parliament can be taken as intending that in so far as the inherent jurisdiction may cover matters outside the 2005 Act, then the legislation leaves that jurisdiction untouched to develop under the common law as it had done prior to 2005.

 

 

 

The decision

 

If you have read carefully so far, you will not be surprised that faced with deciding that Munby J and Theis J and Wall J are wrong and that Judges ought not to be trusted with the power to use the inherent jurisdiction to protect vulnerable adults, or deciding the opposite, the Court decided the opposite.

  1. I do not accept that the jurisdiction described by the learned judge is extensive and all-encompassing, or one which may threaten the autonomy of every adult in the country. It is, as Mr Bowen submits and as the judgments of Munby J and Theis J demonstrate, targeted solely at those adults whose ability to make decisions for themselves has been compromised by matters other than those covered by the MCA 2005. I, like Munby J before me in Re SA, am determined not to offer a definition so as to limit or constrict the group of ‘vulnerable adults’ for whose benefit this jurisdiction may be deployed. I have already quoted paragraphs 76 and 77 from the judgment of Munby J (see paragraph 22 above). I am entirely in agreement with the description of the jurisdiction that is given there.
  1. The appellant’s submissions rightly place a premium upon an individual’s autonomy to make his own decisions. However this point, rather than being one against the existence of the inherent jurisdiction in these cases, is in my view a strong argument in favour of it. The jurisdiction, as described by Munby J and as applied by Theis J in this case, is in part aimed at enhancing or liberating the autonomy of a vulnerable adult whose autonomy has been compromised by a reason other than mental incapacity because they are (to adopt the list in paragraph 77 of Re SA):

a) Under constraint; or

b) Subject to coercion or undue influence; or

c) For some other reason deprived of the capacity to make the relevant decision or disabled from making a free choice, or incapacitated or disabled from giving or expressing a real and genuine consent.

  1. I do not regard the Re SA decision as a one off determination, which is unsupported by earlier authority and not to be followed. As Munby J demonstrates in his thorough review of the earlier case law, the organic development of the inherent jurisdiction, following its rediscovery by the House of Lords in Re F (Mental Patient: Sterilisation) [1990] 2 AC 1, had lead to decisions, particularly those of Re T and Re G (above), which moved away from cases where the individuals plainly lacked mental capacity to take a particular decision themselves. The fact that the subject matter of the cases related to medical treatment, rather than some other class of decision, cannot affect the principle; either the jurisdiction exists or it does not. The question of the class of decision to which any orders are directed will be a matter of application of the jurisdiction, and of proportionality, dependent on the facts of any given case.
  1. In the same manner, the argument that in the Westminster case the court was concerned with a type of relief (preventing removal from the jurisdiction) which is not catered for in the MCA 2005 and therefore the existence of the inherent jurisdiction to supplement the statutory scheme is acceptable, in contrast to the present case, simply does not stand scrutiny. Either the inherent jurisdiction is there to act as a safety net for matters outside the Act or it is not. The fact that Thorpe LJ and Wall LJ were so firmly of the view that the jurisdiction had survived the implementation of the 2005 Act is a powerful indicator that the Appellant’s argument is wrong.

 

 

 

And then

 

  1. My conclusion that the inherent jurisdiction remains available for use in cases to which it may apply that fall outside the MCA 2005 is not merely arrived at on the negative basis that the words of the statute are self-limiting and there is no reference within it to the inherent jurisdiction. There is, in my view, a sound and strong public policy justification for this to be so. The existence of ‘elder abuse’, as described by Professor Williams, is sadly all too easy to contemplate. Indeed the use of the term ‘elder’ in that label may inadvertently limit it to a particular age group whereas, as the cases demonstrate, the will of a vulnerable adult of any age may, in certain circumstances, be overborne. Where the facts justify it, such individuals require and deserve the protection of the authorities and the law so that they may regain the very autonomy that the appellant rightly prizes. The young woman in Re G (above) who would, as Bennett J described, lose her mental capacity if she were once again exposed to the unbridled and adverse influence of her father is a striking example of precisely this point.
  1. For the reasons given by Munby J at paragraph 77 and elsewhere in Re SA, it is not easy to define and delineate this group of vulnerable adults, as, in contrast, it is when the yardstick of vulnerability relates to an impairment or disturbance in the functioning of the mind or brain. Nor is it wise or helpful to place a finite limit on those who may, or may not, attract the court’s protection in this regard. The establishment of a statutory scheme to bring the cases in this hinterland before the Court of Protection would (as Professor Williams described) represent an almost impossible task, whereas the ability of the common law to develop and adapt its jurisdiction, on a case by case basis, as may be required, may meet this need more readily.

 

And this bit is particularly important, as the Appellant’s fallback position was that if the inherent jurisdiction could be used, it should ONLY be for a short period, to allow the vulnerable person a period of time for reflection (and where appropriate to seek their own independent legal advice)  – this was rejected.

 

68. It follows that, despite the clarity and skill with which it has been argued, I have no hesitation in dismissing the appellant’s primary grounds of appeal and upholding the decision of Theis J in this case. Although argued as a separate, fall back, ground, it must follow from my unreserved endorsement of the full jurisdiction described by Munby J in Re: SA and applied subsequently in a number of cases at first instance that I reject the idea that, if it exists, the exercise of the inherent jurisdiction in these cases is limited to providing interim relief designed to permit the vulnerable individual the ‘space’ to make decisions for themselves, removed from any alleged source of undue influence. Whilst such interim provision may be of benefit in any given case, it does not represent the totality of the High Court’s inherent powers.

 

 

In the second judgment, Lord Justice Davies is able to express matters pithily  (perhaps as Lord Justice MacFarlane had done all of the heavy lifting in his seventy paragraphs of judgment)

 

 

76. Miss Lieven stressed the importance of personal autonomy. She expressed concern to the effect that the retention of the inherent jurisdiction might for the future be resorted to by public authorities, pursuing a “Big Brother” agenda, with a view to ensuring that adults make decisions which conform to an acceptable, state decided, norm (I put it in my words, not hers). I acknowledge the point but do not share the concern. It is, of course, of the essence of humanity that adults are entitled to be eccentric, entitled to be unorthodox, entitled to be obstinate, entitled to be irrational. Many are. But the decided authorities show that there can be no power of public intervention simply because an adult proposes to make a decision, or to tolerate a state if affairs, which most would consider neither wise nor sensible. There has to be much more than simply that for any intervention to be justified: and any such intervention will indeed need to be justified as necessary and proportionate. I am sure local authorities, as much as the courts, appreciate that. It is at all events neither possible nor appropriate exhaustively to define “vulnerability” for this purpose. Cases which are close to the line can safely be left to be dealt with under the inherent jurisdiction by the judges of the Family Division on the particular facts and circumstances arising in each instance.

 

 

What is not clear is whether these powers will be used sparingly – I recall Wall LJs injunctions being reported in the mainstream press, but they don’t seem to have opened the floodgates to lots of these applications.

 

And what there is not, as yet, is any decision implying that a Local Authority would have a duty to use these powers to apply to the High Court for orders in the inherent jurisdiction and under what circumstances – reading the clear need for flexibility and not circumscribing the precise situation in which the powers should be used, I rather think that there will not be a decision that sets out the Local Authority’s duty to make such applications.

 

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