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Cheshire Cat, Cheshire Act

Posted on June 1, 2016 by suesspiciousminds

 

Following the Supreme Court decision in Cheshire West, which greatly expanded the definition of restriction of liberty to the point where the system has almost entirely broken down due to the huge increase in volume, the Law Commission have published an interim report on Deprivation of Liberty.

Unsurprisingly, they say that there’s no hot-fix available for the current mess we are in, and their recommendation is for Parliament to produce a brand new Act to put things right.

Given that Deprivation of Liberty was brought about as a solution for the Bournwood gap when the ECHR finally dealt with that case and told us that there was a truck-sized plot hole in our legislation about restricting the liberty of people who were not criminals and not mentally ill,  “for their own good”,  it probably did well to last as long as it did before crumbling like, well like, Cheshire cheese.

 

Click to access law_commission_deprivation_of_liberty_dols_mental_capacity_interim_statement.pdf

 

1.4 We have concluded that legislative change is the only satisfactory solution to the problems we outline below. During the next phase, the Law Commission will
produce draft legislation and a final report. The process of developing draft legislation is likely to result in some changes of substance to the approach outlined here.
This statement should not be construed as necessarily representing our final position.
1.5 The final report and draft legislation will be published before the end of 2016. It will then be for the Government to decide how the recommendations will be taken
forward.
Why, Government, here is some convenient long grass

Why, Government, here is some convenient long grass

 

GO ON THEN!

GO ON THEN!

 

The Law Commission had a healthy response to its consultation, and this bit was, I think, telling

 

Finally, a significant number of consultees argued that any system which is based on Cheshire West
will be unsustainable. It was argued that the acid test defies common sense, the most frequently quoted examples being end-of-
life care andintensive care units. Most concerns related to the practical implications of Cheshire West .
Local authorities reported significant increases in the numbers of referrals locally (often above the tenfold national figure), widespread
non-compliance with time-scales for assessments and many “low-level” or “community” cases being left unassessed. Many queried why the
Law Commission was not seeking to legislate away the acid test.
Onto some detail
1.37 Nevertheless, it is our view that the new scheme must demonstrably reduce the administrative burden and associated costs of complying with the DoLS by
providing the maximum benefit for the minimum cost. With this in mind, we have therefore concluded that the new scheme should focus solely on
ensuring that those deprived of their liberty have appropriate and proportionate safeguards,and should not seek to go as widely as the protective care scheme.
1.38 We propose to recommend a more straightforward, streamlined and flexible scheme for authorising a deprivation of liberty. The responsibility for establishing
the case for a deprivation of liberty will be shifted onto the commissioning body (such as the NHS or local authority) that is arranging the relevant care or
treatment, and away from the care provider. This should provide greater clarity,since the body directly responsible for the proposed deprivation of liberty would
need to provide evidence to support its case. The required evidence would include a capacity assessment and objective medical evidence of
the need for a deprivation of liberty on account of the person’s mental health condition. The commissioning body would also be required to undertake certain
steps such as arranging for the provision of advocacy (or assistance from an appropriate person) and consulting with family members and others.
1.39 All those deprived of liberty would be eligible for safeguards to secure the protection of their rights under article 5 of the ECHR. For example, all those
deprived of their liberty (as well as others, such as family members and advocates) would have rights to seek reviews of their deprivation of liberty and
bring legal proceedings to challenge the deprivation of liberty. There will also be comprehensive rights to advocacy.
Sounds good, but the real test is going to be how possible it is going to be for a family member to challenge restrictive care arrangments and what help the State will provide them to do so. We know for example, that the Neary case showed up huge problems with the DoLs regime and had to be fought with tenacity by an exceptional human being to get the right outcome in the end. You could ask Mark Neary whether the protections that were in place and the mechanism for family members to be able to challenge were robust enough and simple to follow. I suspect I know what his answer would be.  It shouldn’t require that a vulnerable person needs someone as remarkable as Mark to stand up for them, not every vulnerable person has that luxury.
http://www.lag.org.uk/magazine/2014/07/the-court-of-protection-steven-neary’s-story.aspx
The Law Commission touch on the Neary case here, and suggest some additional safeguards
1.41 By way of amendments to the rest of the Mental Capacity Act, we will also seek to maintain, as much as possible, the article 8 ECHR protections that were
contained in the supportive care elements of the scheme, but in such a way as to minimise the demand upon services. These amendments will be aimed primarily
at ensuring that there is proper consideration, in advance of the decision being made, of the necessity of removing individuals from their own home and placing
them in institutional care in the name of their best interests.
The failures of public bodies in this regard have been evident in high-profile cases such as London Borough of Hillingdon v Neary and Essex County Council v RF
The amendments would also aim at giving greater priority to the person’s wishes and feelings when a best interests decision is being made, and qualifying the
immunity from legal action in respect of best interests decisions under section 5 of the Mental Capacity Act so as to provide additional procedural safeguards in
respect of certain key decisions by public authorities.
1.42 In addition we are considering whether a defined group of people should receive additional independent oversight of the deprivation of their liberty, which would be undertaken by an Approved Mental Capacity Professional. Owing to the vast number of people now considered to be deprived of their liberty
following Cheshire West, it would not be proportionate or affordable to provide such oversight to all those caught by article 5 of the ECHR. Whilst
we are still working to develop the precise criteria that would operate to identify this group, we envisage that this group would consist of those who are subject
to greater infringement of their rights, including, in particular, their rights to private and family life under article 8 of the ECHR.
And it wouldn’t be a civil service consultation without an omphaloskepsis exercise of deciding what it should be called
1.47 At consultation we provisionally proposed that the First-tier Tribunal should review cases under our new scheme, thereby replacing the role of the Court of
Protection. This proposal was supported by a significant number of consultees.
We were told that the advantages of a tribunal system included its accessibility, informality and speedy decision-making. But others pointed to the existing levels
of knowledge and expertise in the Court of Protection and the difficulties of demarcation or overlap with the remainder of the Mental Capacity Act if a tribunal
jurisdiction was introduced. We have not yet reached a final decision and will be considering our position further over the coming months.
1.48 Finally, perhaps the issue that provoked most debate at consultation was the nomenclature associated with the DoLS. Most consultees felt that the term
“deprivation of liberty safeguards” was at best unhelpful and, at worst, meant that people were being denied access to legal rights. Some consultees were similarly
critical of our proposed new terminology, including the label “protective care”. A number of consultees suggested the name “liberty safeguards”, whilst the next
favourite was “capacity safeguards”. However, there was no consensus on the terminology that should be adopted. Therefore we invite further
views (by 23 June 2016) on the name that should be given to the new scheme.
Please send your suggestions to Olivia.Bird@lawcommission.gsi.gov.uk.
There are some legitimate issues here about how naming something creates a set of preconceptions about what the scheme is for and whether it is intended to be a rights-based or a patrician cotton wool scheme, or where on the scale it falls, but this sort of thing always does remind me of Douglas Adams, writing about a bunch of middle-managers and marketing execs who fled their own planet and find themselves living on Earth in the stone age, trying to rebuild society from the ground up.
Well, you’re obviously being totally naive of course“, said the girl, “When you’ve been in marketing as long as I have, you’ll know that before any new product can be developed it has to be properly researched. We’ve got to find out what people want from fire, how they relate to it, what sort of image it has for them.”
The crowd were tense. They were expecting something wonderful from Ford.
“Stick it up your nose,” he said.
“Which is precisely the sort of thing we need to know,” insisted the girl, “Do people want fire that can be fitted nasally?“
“And the wheel,” said the Captain, “What about this wheel thingy? It sounds a terribly interesting project.”
“Ah,” said the marketing girl, “Well, we’re having a little difficulty there.”
“Difficulty?” exclaimed Ford. “Difficulty? What do you mean, difficulty? It’s the single simplest machine in the entire Universe!“
The marketing girl soured him with a look.
“Alright, Mr. Wiseguy,” she said, “if you’re so clever, you tell us what colour it should be.“

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Bickering (or the ever decreasing circle of life continues)

Posted on November 14, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

[Grateful to @dilettantevoice for highlighting this case to me on Twitter]

 

You may recall the Court of Appeal taking Mostyn J to task for taking them to task for taking him to task.

https://suesspiciousminds.com/2015/10/22/ever-decreasing-circles-court-of-appeal-take-mostyn-j-to-task-for-taking-them-to-task-for-taking-him-to-task/

 

Well, none of you thought that it would end there, did you?

Re CD 2015

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCOP/2015/74.html

An exceptionally tricky case, and one absolutely can’t underestimate just how difficult a job High Court Judges have to do. This one involved a woman with very severe mental health problems, who after she stabbed herself in the stomach, the hospital found that she had tumours in her stomach that needed to be removed. Although the woman was detained under the Mental Health Act, the power to perform treatment against a person’s will under that Act is really confined to treatment for their mental health, and this was a physical treatment. As the woman would be under anesthetic at the time, the High Court has previously ruled that this would be a deprivation of liberty.

A NHS Trust v A [2013] EWHC 2442(Fam) [2014] Fam 161

Additionally, there’s the complication of some wording in the Mental Capacity Act which suggests that a deprivation of liberty can only be dealt with under the Mental Health Act if the person is detained under the Mental Health Act.

 

 

  • he confusion surrounding the main test is mirrored by the confusion that the interface with the MHA gives rise to. I recently have had to grapple with this in Re A [2015] EWCOP 71. Mr Justice Baker has given a characteristically exhaustive judgment on the subject in A NHS Trust v A [2013] EWHC 2442(Fam) [2014] Fam 161 as has Judge Parry in A Local Health Board v AB [2015] EWCOP 31. The confusion arises from the highly ambiguous and double negative laden terms of para 3(2) of Schedule 1A to the MCA 2005. This states:

 

“P is ineligible if the authorised course of action is not in accordance with a requirement which the relevant regime imposes”

 

  • In this case CD is P. “Ineligible” means ineligible to be deprived of liberty by the 2005 Act. The “authorised course of action” is the surgical removal of the ovarian masses. The “relevant regime” is the MHA regime whereby CD is compulsorily detained in a mental hospital. So, for our purposes, para 3(2) reads:

 

“CD is ineligible to be deprived of liberty by the 2005 Act if the surgical removal of the ovarian masses is not in accordance with a requirement which the MHA regime whereby CD is compulsorily detained in a mental hospital imposes.”

 

  • Mr Auburn rightly says that there are two ways of reading this which give rise to directly contradictory results. The first is in a pitilessly literal way, as argued by Mr Matthewson. It is this: if the surgical removal of the ovarian masses is not in accordance with a requirement of the MHA regime whereby CD is compulsorily detained in a mental hospital then CD is ineligible to be deprived of liberty by the 2005 Act. It isn’t, he says, so she is ineligible and so the necessary orders have to be made under the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court. The problem with this interpretation is that it gives rise to a result directly contrary to the intention of the statute and to the express terms of the Code of Practice, as I explained in Re A at paras 10 – 14 (accepting the submissions not only of Ms Butler-Cole but also of Ms Dolan, on that occasion instructed by the Official Solicitor).
  • The alternative interpretation, which I adopted in Re A, and which I maintain to be correct is this: if the MHA regime whereby CD is compulsorily detained in a mental hospital imposes a specific requirement for dealing with the problem of the ovarian masses then CD is ineligible to be deprived of her liberty under the 2005 Act for the purposes of dealing with the problem by a different procedure under that Act. It doesn’t (obviously) so she isn’t ineligible. As I said in Re A this is plainly what the scheme of section 16A and Schedule 1A intends and the matter is conclusively confirmed by paras 4.50 and 4.51 of the Code of Practice. In my judgment it would be ridiculous if the whole case had to leave the Court of Protection with its statutory powers and enter the High Court exercising common law inherent powers by virtue of a pedantically literal reading of para 3(2).
  • The orders which I make will be made by me sitting in the Court of Protection under powers granted by Parliament in the MCA.

 

 

Mostyn J is utterly and completely right here, the wording of this piece of the legislation is ghastly (double-negatives are really not something that you want in a piece of legislation anywhere, particularly about something so serious) and it has left a serious lacuna in the law.  And you know how High Court Judges tend to solve lacunas in the law – that’s right, the ‘theoreticaly limitless powers of the inherent jurisdiction’  [Though not here, Mostyn eschewing Baker J’s inherent jurisdiction solution to say instead that the power must really remain under the MCA]

 

A very tricky case, and almost all of what Mostyn J says in the judgment is careful, apposite and fair.

Unfortunately, this passage decides to resurrect the quarrel with both the Supreme Court in Cheshire West, and the Court of Appeal

 

In KW & Ors v Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council [2015] EWCA Civ 1054 at para 32 the Court of Appeal stated “even if Cheshire West is wrong, there is nothing confusing about it”. It may seem that way from the lofty heights of the Court of Appeal; and of course the literal words of the Supreme Court’s test are perfectly easy to understand. But for we hoplites who have to administer it at first instance the scope and ramifications of the test are, with respect, extremely confusing. As Mr Matthewson, instructed by the Official Solicitor for CD, rightly stated “anyone who deals with this day by day knows this is confusing”. What of the situation where, as here, the protected person actively and fervently expresses the wish to undergo the procedure that is said to amount to a deprivation of liberty? What of the situation, as was the case in Bournemouth Borough Council v PS & Anor [2015] EWCOP 39, where the protected person shows no inclination whatsoever to leave the home where he is cared for round the clock? What of the situation where the protected person is seriously disabled, perhaps bedridden, perhaps in a coma, and is thus physically incapable of exercising the freedom to leave? The answers I received from the Bar when discussing these scenarios belie the blithe suggestion that “there is nothing confusing” about the test. I do not accept the criticism that my approach to these cases is “distorted” by my “passionate” and “tenacious” belief that Cheshire West is wrong. Rather, it is a loyal approach which tries to apply literally and purposively the Supreme Court’s test while at the same time pointing out how confusing and curious it is, to say nothing of the cost it causes to the public purse

 

 

I think that there IS an argument about whether Baker J’s decision in Re A (that the surgical procedure amounts to a deprivation of liberty) actually meets the test in Cheshire West – I think that one can argue it either way and a strong case can be made for if a Court has declared that the procedure is in P’s best interests despite a lack of consent that the patient has had sufficient safeguards and an additional authorisation of a Deprivation of Liberty isn’t necessary.

It is also quite right that we now have a definition of deprivation of liberty which is utterly unworkable in practice due to resource implications (as we have seen, if every LA issued every deprivation of liberty application that they need to on the wording of Cheshire West, the Court would spend the next five years dealing with this years cases, and so on), and that the MCA on this particular issue is badly in need of reform. Such reform not likely to hit us until 2017 at best.

 

But the Rule of Law is the Rule of Law.  Whatever one might think of the Cheshire West test (and personal opinions and critiques of it are perfectly valid – it wasn’t a unanimous decision on all issues in the Supreme Court itself), the test has been set and it is now to be applied.  In the first of the two examples, it is really plain that the absence of resistance from P if they lack capacity is neither here nor there, that’s not a legitimate part of the test. After all, that was the very issue in Bournewood that led to the development of the MCA in  the first place. The latter question of whether you assess whether a person is being deprived of their liberty by looking at their physical characteristics has been squashed by the Supreme Court.

[There IS , I think an argument about whether someone who is physically prevented temporarily from getting up to leave – under anaesthetic for example, or that they have a broken leg that will heal, meets the Cheshire West test. But that’s for a Judge to determine when they are faced with an application of the test to those particular facts]

 

It is a fine line between a Judge being free to criticise the law when it is resulting in unfairness and staying out of politics and just applying the law as it is to the facts of the case.

I’m aware that I am being hypocritical here – because I do think that Judges can and should speak out when the law at present is unfair and makes unreasonable outcomes when it is applied.  Because when Mostyn J and others have attacked LASPO, I’ve supported and applauded them. That is a law whose application is currently unfair (particularly the Legal Aid Agency’s approach to granting exceptional funding where human rights require it, but ignoring when Judges tell them that this particular case would breach a person’s human rights if funding were not given).  I also disagree with LASPO itself, but I’m stuck with it unless and until Parliament changes it. So, am I just as unreasonable as Mostyn J considers the Court of Appeal to be – given that I’m happy for him to critique and attack the law when I agree with him, but criticise him when I think the law is right?

Damn, I’ve painted myself into a corner here.

 

Perhaps what we need is a case with the citation Mostyn J v Court of Appeal  (to be decided in the Supreme Court)

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Ever decreasing circles – Court of Appeal take Mostyn J to task for taking them to task for taking him to task…

Posted on October 22, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

 

Readers of the blog may be familiar with Mostyn J’s continuing battle to have the Supreme Court change their mind about the deprivation of liberty test set down in Cheshire West, and failing that to simply disagree with their decision at every opportunity.

In this particular case, Rochdale had asked Mostyn J to authorise a care plan for a person lacking capacity that clearly amounted, on the Cheshire West test to a deprivation of liberty.

At the first hearing, Mostyn J told everyone that Cheshire West was nonsense (politely and judicially and intellectually, but that was the gist) and that the person was not being deprived of their liberty and thus there was no need to authorise it.

The case was appealed, and rather unusually, by the time that it got to the Court of Appeal EVERYONE agreed that the Mostyn J judgment should be overturned and that the person was being deprived of their liberty. The Court of Appeal approved a consent order to that effect but did not give a judgment explaining why Mostyn J had been wrong  (perhaps wrongly thinking that where everyone agreed the Judge was wrong and that he had gone against a clear Supreme Court decision with which he did not agree but was not able to distinguish the instant case from, that it was somewhat plain)

 

 

It went back to Mostyn J to authorise or not, the deprivation of liberty. However, he declined and took everyone, including the Court of Appeal to task and said that a consent order without a judgment was not binding on him. And thus did not reach the point of authorising the deprivation, but instead set down a hearing to be conducted by himself as to whether there was a deprivation of liberty at all.

Incredibly bravely (but rightly), the parties appealed THAT, and the Court of Appeal determined it.

[Previous blog on Round 3 of this peculiar litigation is here   https://suesspiciousminds.com/2015/03/16/mostyn-powers/  ]

 

So, by way of catch-up here, in this one case, Mostyn J disagreed with the Supreme Court, then when the Court of Appeal disagreed with him, he disagreed with them. And now the Court of Appeal disagree with him again.

In the midst of all of this, are some real people with real problems to resolve, and a lot of taxpayers money being spent.

KW and Others v Rochdale MBC 2015

 

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2015/1054.html

 

The Court of Appeal pull no punches whatsoever. In fact I understand that this was very much what it looked like when the Master of the Rolls removed his gloves after the judgment

 

 

The Master of the Rolls does not have to go through the metal detectors en route to the Court room

The Master of the Rolls does not have to go through the metal detectors en route to the Court room

 

But first, the technical part of the appeal – if the Court of Appeal approve a consent order overturning the decision of the original Judge but don’t give a judgment, is the case actually overturned? (I understand that this is actually one of the lesser known and unpopular Zen koans)

 

The grounds of appeal from the second judgment

 

  • The principal ground of appeal is that the judge misinterpreted the consent order when he said that the Court of Appeal had not decided that KW was being deprived of her liberty.
  • We accept that (i) nowhere does the order explicitly state that there was a deprivation of liberty; and (ii) the use in para 2 of the order of the words “to the extent that the restrictions in place pursuant to the Care Plan are a deprivation of KW’s liberty, such liberty is hereby authorised” might suggest that the court was not deciding that the restrictions were in fact a deprivation of liberty. But read in their context, that is clearly not the correct interpretation for at least two reasons. First, para 2 must be read in the light of para 1, which governs the whole order. Para 1 states that the appeal is allowed. The remaining paragraphs set out the court’s directions consequential upon the allowing of the appeal. When read together with section 6 of the notice of appeal, the order that the appeal was allowed necessarily involved the court deciding that KW’s care package does involve a deprivation of liberty. The words “to the extent that” etc are perhaps unfortunate, but they cannot detract from what allowing the appeal necessarily entailed. These words were derived from para 11 of the Model Re X Order which had been published on the Court of Protection website and which practitioners had been encouraged to use. We were told by counsel that this form of words is not universally used. We understand that the form of words more often used is along the lines of: “P is deprived of his or her liberty as a result of arrangements in the Care Plan and these are lawful”. This is undoubtedly preferable to the earlier version.
  • Secondly, para 2 must also be read in the light of the consequential orders set out at paras 3 to 5 of the consent order. The reviews there provided for are clearly reviews of the kind contemplated where there is a deprivation of liberty.
  • It follows that the judge was wrong to hold that it had not been decided by this court that KW was being detained by the state within the terms of article 5. The appeal must, therefore, be allowed.

 

Was the consent order made ultra vires?

 

  • Was the judge right to say that the Court of Appeal took “a procedurally impermissible route” so that its decision was “ultra vires”? It is important that we comment on this statement in view of the general importance of the point and the fact that the judge’s comments have apparently given rise to considerable degree of public interest. We acknowledge that, despite these comments, the judge did say that the rule of law depends on first instance judges “complying scrupulously with decisions and orders from appellate courts”. And, as we have said, that is what he purported to do.
  • An order of any court is binding until it is set aside or varied. This is consistent with principles of finality and certainty which are necessary for the administration of justice: R (on the application of Lunn) v Governor of Moorland Prison [2006] EWCA Civ 700, [2006] 1 WLR 2870, at [22]; Serious Organised Crime Agency v O’Docherty (also known as Mark Eric Gibbons) and another [2013] EWCA Civ 518 at [69]. Such an order would still be binding even if there were doubt as to the court’s jurisdiction to make the order: M v Home Office [1993] UKHL 5; [1994] 1 AC 377 at 423; Isaacs v Robertson [1985] AC 97 at 101-103. It is futile and, in our view, inappropriate for a judge, who is called upon to give effect to an order of a higher court which is binding on him, to seek to undermine that order by complaining that it was ultra vires or wrong for any other reason.
  • In any event, the judge was wrong to say that the consent order was ultra vires because it was made by a procedurally impermissible route.
  • The issue turns on the true construction of para 6.4 of PD 52A. Rule 52.11 provides that the appeal court will allow an appeal where the decision of the lower court (a) was wrong or (b) was unjust because of a serious procedural or other irregularity in the proceedings of the lower court. It is concerned with the “hearing of appeals” which is done by way of a review or, in certain circumstances, a re-hearing. What is envisaged by rule 52.11 is a hearing which leads to a decision on the merits. To use the language of the first sentence of para 6.4 of the practice direction, this is what an appellate court normally does when allowing an appeal.
  • The use of the word “normally” in this sentence presages a departure from rule 52.11 in specified circumstances. The word “normally” followed by the use of the word “however” in the following sentence makes it clear that what follows specifies the circumstances in which the court may depart from the norm. The second sentence states that the court may set aside or vary the order of the lower court without determining the merits of the appeal, but only if (i) the parties consent and (ii) the court is satisfied that there are good and sufficient reasons for taking this course. That such a decision will be made on paper is clear from the heading to para 6.4 and the words of the third sentence. It is true that the second sentence speaks of setting aside or varying the order under appeal, whereas the first sentence (faithful to rule 52.11) speaks of allowing an appeal. But we do not consider that there is any significance in this difference of language. Rule 52.10 provides inter alia that the appeal court has power to “(2)(a) affirm, set aside or vary any order or judgment made or given by the lower court”. These words are picked up precisely in para 6.4 which sets out the powers that the appeal court has when allowing an appeal.
  • The appeal court, therefore, has a discretion to allow an appeal by consent on the papers without determining the merits at a hearing if it is satisfied that there are good and sufficient reasons for doing so. What are good and sufficient reasons? The answer will depend on the circumstances of the case, but we think that it would be helpful to provide some guidance. If the appeal court is satisfied that (i) the parties’ consent to the allowing of the appeal is based on apparently competent legal advice, and (ii) the parties advance plausible reasons to show that the decision of the lower court was wrong, it is likely to make an order allowing the appeal on the papers and without determining the merits. In such circumstances, it would involve unnecessary cost and delay to require the parties to attend a hearing to persuade the appeal court definitively on the point.
  • At para 14 of his judgment, the judge said that, where a merits based decision has been reached at first instance which all parties agree should be set aside on appeal, para 6.4 requires there to be a hearing and a judgment. He added: “The judge whose decision is being impugned is surely entitled to no less, and there is a plain need to expose error so that later legal confusion does not arise”. We disagree. Para 6.4 does not require a decision on the merits in every case where there has been a decision on the merits in the lower court. There is no reason to restrict in this way the wide discretion conferred by para 6.4 to allow an appeal by consent without a hearing followed by a decision on the merits. The words “good and sufficient reasons” are very wide. Further, we reject the notion that the judge whose decision is under appeal has any entitlement to a decision on the merits. In deciding whether to make a consent order without a decision on the merits, the appeal court is only concerned with the interests of the parties and the public interest. The interests of the judge are irrelevant.
  • We accept, however, that there will be cases where it may be in the interest of the parties or the public interest for the court to make a decision on the merits after a hearing even where the parties agree that the appeal should be allowed. Mostyn J referred to cases in the field of family law. For example, in Bokor-Ingram v Bokor-Ingram [2009] EWCA Civ 27, [2009] 2 FLR 922, the parties by consent asked the court to allow an appeal, set aside the order below and make a revised order. Thorpe LJ said:

 

“5. A short disposal might have followed but for our concerns that the judgment below had already been reported …..and was causing, or was likely to cause, difficulty for specialist practitioners and judges in this field of ancillary relief.

6. Accordingly, we decided to state shortly why we had reached a preliminary conclusion that the appeal, had it not been compromised, would in any event have been allowed.”

 

  • The fact that the decision of the lower court in that case was causing difficulty led the appellate court to conclude that there were not “good and sufficient reasons” for departing from the normal procedure of conducting a hearing and giving a decision on the merits.
  • An example from a different area of law is Halliburton Energy Services Inc v Smith International (North Sea) Ltd [2006] [EWCA] Civ 185. The lower court had held that a certain patent was invalid. Following the issue of appeal proceedings, the case was settled. The Court of Appeal was asked to make a consent order for the restoration of the patent to the register without deciding the merits of the appeal. The court decided that it had to hear the merits on the grounds that, for a patent to be restored to the register, what was needed was a decision reversing the order for revocation and showing that the previous decision was wrong. Here too (but for a very different reason), the appellate court considered that a decision on the merits was needed.

 

 

 

But you aren’t here for the technicalities. You want to see what happened with that boxing glove and the horseshoes.

 

 

  • Mostyn J’s first judgment did not raise any issue of law. It is true that his criticism of Cheshire West (what he describes in para 20 of the second judgment as his “jurisprudential analysis”) raised a question of law. But this question has been settled by the Supreme Court relatively recently. The judge’s analysis was, and could be, of no legal effect. It was irrelevant. Indeed, he purported to apply Cheshire West to the facts of the case. The basis of the appeal was that he had failed to apply Cheshire West to the facts properly. The public interest in the first judgment has focused on his criticisms of Cheshire West. Unlike Bokor-Ingram, the decision of the lower court in the present case should have caused no difficulty for practitioners or judges in the field. It was a decision on the facts which, with benefit of the advice of counsel and solicitors, the parties agreed was wrong. The Court of Appeal must have taken the view that the parties had advanced plausible reasons for contending that the judge’s decision was wrong, so that there were good and sufficient reasons for allowing the appeal without deciding the merits. In our view, it was clearly right to do so.
  • This litigation has an unfortunate history. The judge has twice made decisions which have been the subject of an appeal to this court. On both occasions, the parties have agreed that the appeal must be allowed. This has led to considerable unnecessary costs to the public purse and unnecessary use of court time. We regret to say that it is the judge’s tenacious adherence to his jurisprudential analysis leading to his conclusion that Cheshire West was wrongly decided that has been at the root of this. He says at para 26 of the second judgment that “the law is now in a state of serious confusion”. Even if Cheshire West is wrong, there is nothing confusing about it.
  • In our view, the judge’s passionate view that the legal analysis of the majority in Cheshire West is wrong is in danger of distorting his approach to these cases. In the light of the unfortunate history, we are of the opinion that the review should be conducted by a different judge, who need not be a high court judge,
  • For the reasons that we have given, this appeal is allowed.

 

 

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NRA and Others 2015 (the Charles J DoLS case)

Posted on October 5, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

The NRA is often in the news, generally after some terrible incident in an American school and usually positing the opinion that if only everyone on the scene had had a firearm rather than just the sociopathic person shooting everyone nothing bad would have happened.  This is a different NRA. So if you have come here looking for the National Rifle Association (hi Piers, bye Piers) then you’re in the wrong place.

 

This is Charles J’s decision in a group of linked cases designed to test whether in a case where a vulnerable person’s liberty is being deprived as a result of their care package, that person HAS to be represented. The President, said no, we could distinguish between cases where the deprivation is contentious (when they should be represented) and where it is not contentious (where a streamlined fast-track system could be in place where there might not even be a hearing)

 

This came before Charles J as a result of the District Judge who had first got the linked cases realising that this was a real can open, worms everywhere scenario   , described by me here   

https://suesspiciousminds.com/2015/07/13/deprivation-mmmmeltdown

 

This is chief is a pragmatic engineering solution to the huge mountain of such Deprivation of Liberty cases that are going to come before the Courts as a result of the Supreme Court in Cheshire West broadening out the criteria of what consituted a deprivation of the person’s liberty.

Thus, if you don’t do Court of Protection work, you need read no further, and that may be a relief to you, because the thing that most lawyers know about Charles J is this gem from the Court of Appeal in Jones v Jones 2011 :-

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2011/41.html

 

The appeal judge quoted from an article in the magazine Family Law by Ashley Murray, a Liverpool barrister. This began:

“There are certain challenges each of us should attempt in our lifetime and for most these involve a particular jump, a mountain climb, etc. Akin to these in the legal world would be reading from first to last a judgment of Mr Justice Charles.”

Lord Justice Wilson commented: “Mr Murray’s introductory sentences were witty and brave. In respect at any rate of the judgment in the present case, they were also, I am sorry to say, apposite.”

 

Of course, I have no views on this whatsoever, and merely report the judicial decision of the Court of Appeal in that regard.  I may, however, have prepared a small packed lunch, put on a warm coat and ironed my Welsh flag before I sat down to tackle the judgment in NRA and Others 2015.

 

Charlton Heston of the NRA is asked by Dr Zaius to re-read a Charles J judgment

Charlton Heston of the NRA is asked by Dr Zaius to re-read a Charles J judgment

 

 

My mission-statement (sorry I just shuddered) when I began this blog is “I read it, so you don’t have to”.  I have been putting off this particular task for quite some time.

As I outlined, the President had arrived at a two track process – where P (the vulnerable person) would only be represented in a deprivation of liberty case where the deprivation or the plan was contentious.  However, when the Official Solicitor in the case appealed that decision, the Court of Appeal had two things to say – firstly that it hadn’t even been a decision so there was nothing to appeal, but secondly that P should ALWAYS be represented.

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2015/599.html

 

These cases were then the first raft of non-contentious cases that were run as test cases to work out what the hell was going on. It had become really apparent that the Official Solicitors office, who normally represent P would be utterly overwhelmed by demand and that the practical implications of following the Court of Appeal’s guidance (since it is obiter and not ratio) would be to grind the whole system to a halt, and more importantly make it impossible for P to be represented in a contentious case.

So there were a few questions

Should P always be represented?  Could P be represented by a litigation friend instead of the Official Solicitor? Would that litigation friend be able to speak in Court if they didn’t have rights of audience?

Re NRA and Others 2015

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCOP/2015/59.html

If I tell you that the judgment contains 269 paragraphs, and that a full 16 of them come under the sub-heading of “Flaws and gaps in the reasoning of the Court of Appeal”  you get much of the flavour of the whole thing without having to read it all.  A state of affairs for which I envy you.

 

It is a curious thing, and a dreadful position for the Judge to be placed in. To make this decision right in law, and respect the well-established principle of Winterwerp v Netherlands  1980 ..it is essential that the person concerned should have access to a court and the opportunity to be heard either in person or, where necessary, through some form of representation, failing which he will not have been afforded “the fundamental guarantees of procedure applied in matters of deprivation of liberty” …    and the Court of Appeal’s steer which though NOT binding could honestly not have been clearer, the Judge would have to break the Court of Protection system. Barely any case would be heard and injustice done to thousands of cases. The alternative was to take the pragmatic engineering solution of  “This can’t work if we insist on P always being represented, so we’re not going to do that”.   However, it has to be legally dressed up so that it at least looks as though it can withstand an appeal.

 

Charles J makes the following conclusions, which he thankfully summarises at the end

 

A brief summary of my conclusions is that:

(1) P does not have to be a party to all applications for welfare orders sought to authorise, and which when they are made will authorise, a deprivation of P’s liberty caused by the implementation of the care package on which the welfare order is based.

(2) In two of the test cases before me I have made orders that reflect that conclusion and my conclusion that the procedural safeguards required by Article 5 are (and are best) provided in those cases by appointing a parent of P as P’s Rule 3A representative. As such, that parent as a continuation of the dedicated and devoted support given by P’s family to P and directed to promoting P’s best interests, in a balanced way, can best provide (a) the court with the information it requires about the care package and P, and (b) P’s participation in the proceedings. Also, that parent can and in my view will monitor the implementation of the care plan and so initiate any challenge to it or review of it that the parent considers should be made in P’s best interests.

(3) I do not have a test case before me in which (a) P has not been joined as a party and the Official Solicitor has not agreed to act as P’s litigation friend, and (b) the appointment of a family member or friend as P’s Rule 3A representative without joining P as a party is not an available option. Such a test case or cases should be listed for hearing.

(4) In contrast to the Court of Appeal in Re X and subject to further argument in such a test case or cases, I consider that the way in which the Court of Protection can at present best obtain further information and P’s participation in such cases is for it to exercise its investigatory jurisdiction to obtain information through obtaining s. 49 reports or through the issue of a witness summonses. This keeps the matter under the control of the court rather than invoking the necessity of appointing a litigation friend with the problems and delays that history tells us this entails and will entail and I have concluded is, or shortly will be, not fit for purpose.

(5) I do not for a moment suggest that absent further resources being provided there will not be problems and delays in taking the course referred to in paragraph (4). Also, and importantly, I recognise that it would be focused on Article 5(1) and would not provide for monitoring on the ground until it is repeated from time to time for that purpose. But, the appointment of a litigation friend will also not provide that monitoring.

(6) In such cases the argument advanced by the Secretary of State before me that a Rule 3A representative identified by the local authority be appointed shows that if this was a practically available option it would replicate the input that I have decided can be provided by an appropriate family member or friend and so satisfy the procedural safeguards required by Article 5 and common law fairness in non-controversial cases without joining P as a party.

(7) That replication is an obvious solution that will provide the necessary safeguards more efficiently and at less expense than either

i. the making of orders for s. 49 reports and the issuing of witness summonses perhaps coupled with more frequent reviews, or

ii. joining P as a party.

(8) So I urge the Secretary of State and local authorities to consider urgently, and in any event before a test case or cases of this type are before the court, how this solution can be provided on the ground.

 

He also ruled definitively that a litigation friend can, if appointed by the Court, be given the power to conduct litigation

 

Gregory v Turner [2003] 1 WLR 1149, at paragraphs 50 to 58, it is common ground that if and when the court appoints such a litigation friend:

i) it can also give him or her a right of audience and the right to conduct litigation in relation to those proceedings (see Paragraphs 1(2)(b) and 2(1)(b) of Schedule 3 to the 2007 Act),ii) it can remove those rights, and further and alternatively

iii) it can end the appointment of the litigation friend (see COP Rules 144 and 140).

 

[He described the arguments to the contrary made by some of the parties as ‘arid’.  I can’t think of anything to say about that which isn’t churlish, so let’s move on. ]

And that conducting litigation can include anything that P could do themselves as a litigant in person if only they had capacity – so definitively, if a Court appoints a litigation friend and grants them the right to conduct litigation, they can do everything – they can deal with correspondence, draft a statement and address the Court. They can be given rights of audience, even though they would not be someone who has them.

 

I have mixed feelings about this decision – it was an impossible position for the Judge to be in. To make a fair decision would have broken the Court of Protection and caused far more harm to all of the vulnerable people who require its services. On the other hand, I just agree with Winterwerp and feel that if someone is being locked up even if it is ‘for their own good’ they should have someone speaking on their behalf and making such points as ought to be made.

The only thing I would say is that by setting out a huge section entitled “Flaws and gaps in the Court of Appeal’s reasoning”,  we now have a pretty solid indicator that if a decision is made relying on this judgment and someone intends to appeal it, the Court of Appeal are going to be rather interested in getting to grips with it. That really just places even more uncertainty into an area of the law which has been nothing but uncertainty ever since the President first encountered the words “Cheshire West”

The Law Commission reforms of deprivation of liberty can’t come soon enough.

 

 

Should Mr Heston be represented here? Does the net satisfy the Cheshire West 'acid test'?

Should Mr Heston be represented here? Does the net satisfy the Cheshire West ‘acid test’?

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Deprivation mmmmeltdown

Posted on July 13, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

 

The case of MOD & Others (Deprivation of Liberty) 2015   http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCOP/2015/47.html   involved nine unrelated cases where Local Authorities were seeking test cases under the President’s new scheme for ‘fast-tracking’ Deprivation of Liberty authorisations.

 

You may recall that the Court of Appeal dealt with the President’s scheme as it was laid out in Re X  (saying that he did not have the power to do this in a judgment, but as it wasn’t really a judgment they had no jurisdiction to overturn it on appeal, but that in any event, a scheme which didn’t include a voice for P  – the person being detained, would almost certainly be wrong)   http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2015/599.html

 

There’s a Practice Direction for the fast track process now, which will need some slight tweaking in light of Re X.

 

Anyway, this is the first reported authority on how these ‘fast track’ cases will work in practice.  The answer, in short would be  “not well” and “not fast”

 

The problem here is that the current scheme for P to be represented is through the Official Solicitor.   The Official Solictor told the Court that in the month after the Court of Appeal decided Re X  (which was effectively the green light to start bringing the DoLs cases) requests doubled.

 

District Judge Marin said this:-

I understand that at present, about 100 applications have been issued since the Court of Appeal’s decision three weeks ago with more arriving each week. At the hearing, one local authority told me that they alone have “hundreds” that are to be issued imminently.

 

[If anything, that’s something of an understatement. The ballpark figure nationally is that up to 100,000 such cases might be issued in a year, as a result of the wider definition for restriction of liberty settled on by the Supreme Court in Cheshire West]

 

20….the Official Solicitor wrote a letter which is not only referable to the cases before me but also to all other similar cases where he has been invited to act.

  1. The Official Solicitor said this:

    “..I am not currently in a position to accept the invitations to act as litigation friend in the ‘referrals’ in these cases.

    I am most unlikely, on my current understanding of my budgetary position, to be able, even when I have established a light touch process for this class of case, which is nevertheless consistent with my duties as litigation friend, and the external outsourcing to fund them, to be able to accept invitations to act in more than a relatively small proportion of the total expected numbers of these former streamlined procedure cases.

    Even before the dramatic increase for the month of June 2015 …. and these 43 actual and impending invitations to me to act as litigation friend in this class of case, in resource terms my CoP Healthcare and Welfare team was then running at or beyond full stretch, ‘fire fighting’ in a way that was unlikely to be sustainable beyond the short term.”

  2. He went on to elaborate:

    “There has been an increase in the number of invitations to me to act as litigation friend (‘referrals’) for P in Court of Protection welfare applications, including applications for orders the giving effect to which deprives P of their liberty.

    For the three calendar years 2011, 2012 and 2013 the number of new referrals a month averaged 28 cases. In 2014 this increased to an average monthly referral rate of 50 cases. In the five months to the end of May 2015, the monthly referral rate was in excess of 53 cases. In resource terms my CoP Healthcare and Welfare team was then running at or beyond full stretch, ‘fire fighting’ in a way that was unlikely to be sustainable beyond the short term.

    There has been a dramatic increase for the month of June 2015 with 99 new referrals to the end of the month. But that number for June does not include the 43 new invitations to act to which I am responding. As at the end of May I had 137 referrals in my CoP Healthcare and Welfare team, in the ‘pre-acceptance’ stage (which clearly did not include these former streamlined procedure cases).

    From time to time, I have taken those steps I have been able to take, having regard to budgetary constraints and balancing the needs of all my teams, to increase staff available to the work of the healthcare and welfare team as its caseloads have risen.

    But, as has been frequently noted publicly, I do not have the staff resources to manage the expected significant additional increase in caseload arising from the decision of the Supreme Court in Cheshire West.”

      1. Despite reference in the letter to a light touch scheme to allow cases to be processed quickly, the Official Solicitor nonetheless commented that:
        1. “But the simple facts are that:
  • I am not currently in a position to accept the invitations to act as litigation friend in the referrals in these cases; and,
  • I am most unlikely, on my current understanding of my budgetary position, to be able, even when I have established a light touch process, which is nevertheless consistent with my duties as litigation friend, and the external outsourcing to which have I referred above, to be able to accept invitations to act in more than a relatively small proportion of the total expected numbers of these former streamlined procedure cases.”
  1. As if to emphasise the seriousness of the matter, the Official Solicitor copied his letter to the President and Vice President of the court, the local authority applicants in the cases and the Ministry of Justice as his “sponsoring department”.

 

 

The Supreme Court have made a ruling that means there will be thousands more of this case, probably tens of thousands. The Court of Appeal has said that P must have a voice. The organisation who are responsible for P having a voice say that they are already operating at a referral rate four times that which they can actually take (and the deluge hasn’t even begun yet – it is something like 100 a month at the moment, and when these cases really get going, it will be more like five to eight THOUSAND a month)

 

As the wise Lucy Series has said, this is now an engineering problem, rather than a logical one. The system as it is, clearly is not going to cope with what is coming at it.   And once we solve the representation of P problem, we will then have the Best Interests Assessor problem, then the social work problem, then the lawyers for relatives problem, then the Judges problem, then the Court time problem.

You can’t go from a system which just about functions at 25 cases a month and turn it into one that can handle 5,000-8,000 cases a month.  Everyone in family law can tell the Court of Protection just how hard it was to cope with the post Baby P deluge, and that was at worst a doubling of demand. Here demand is going up TWO HUNDRED to THREE HUNDRED times.

 

We shall see what happens when these test cases come before Charles J, the vice president of the Court of Protection, but there really are no easy solutions here.  The Law Commission has recognised the need for a complete overhaul of the law on DoLS, but that’s years off.

 

  1. So far as the remaining eight cases are concerned though, I decided to transfer them to the Vice President of the Court of Protection to decide issues at a hearing which I listed as follows:

    1. Whether P must be joined as a party in a case involving deprivation of liberty

    2. Whether the appointment of a rule 3A representative is sufficient in a case involving deprivation of liberty

    3. If P must be joined as a party, in the absence of any suitable person to act as litigation friend, what should be done in circumstances where the Official Solicitor cannot accept an invitation to act.

    4. Whether a family member can act as litigation friend in circumstances where that family member has an interest in the outcome of the proceedings.

    5. Whether other deprivation of liberty cases not before the court on this occasion but which raise similar issues to this case should be stayed pending a determination of the issues recorded at paragraphs 1 to 4.

  2. With regard to the fifth issue, some of the parties expressed the concern that they have other cases listed and they were loathe to incur the cost of a hearing if a similar order is likely to be made or the court will stay the case pending determination of these issues. To address this, I have invited the Vice President to consider staying the cases presently listed such that hearings already listed may be vacated. It occurs to me that he may also wish to consider whether an automatic stay should be imposed on future cases that are issued.
  3. I have taken the course of referring these cases to the Vice President because it is vital that a decision is made on these issues as quickly as possible. None of the parties were equipped to fully argue the issues at the hearing as they would need to prepare: this is not a criticism as the issues were not identified until the hearing. There would therefore need to be another hearing and if so, it must make sense that this hearing produces a judgment from a senior judge which will set out the court’s view on these matters and direct the way forward. There will thus be a saving in time and costs which is consistent with the overriding objective in the court process.
  4. So far as the Official Solicitor is concerned, I do not discharge him in any of these cases and I have ordered him by 4pm on 22 July 2015 to file and serve on the parties a statement which shall:

    1 Provide a full and evidence based explanation of why he cannot cope with the number of deprivation of liberty applications in which he is invited to act as litigation friend

    2 Explain in full detail providing evidence where appropriate as to which areas or processes cause him difficulty and why

    3 Inform the court when he expects to be able to cope with deprivation of liberty cases and the likely time scale in which he can start work on a case.

    4. Provide any other information to the court that will assist the court to make decisions in this case regarding the position of the Official Solicitor.

  5. I believe that this information is vital to allow the court to properly consider his position.
  6. I am also anxious that the court can properly evaluate the availability of a litigation friend in all of the cases apart from MOD where one has been appointed. I therefore ordered the Applicants in each case by 4pm on 22 July 2015 to file a statement which shall:

    1 Explain what steps have been taken to find a litigation friend for P

    2 Set out whether IMCAs or other Advocates or resources are available to act as litigation friend or if not, why they are not available.

    3 List all family members who are willing to act as litigation friend.

  7. I was asked in all the cases to approve the deprivation of liberty of P on an interim basis. I declined to do so because it seems to me that the effect of the Court of Appeal’s judgment is to demand a higher level of scrutiny than the Re X process demanded and on the information available which is in the form of Re X, I am unable to do so. There are also some cases where the information is incomplete. However, my order provides that applications for interim orders can be renewed at the next hearing.
  8. By setting out the issues as they emerged at the hearing and making the orders I have referred to, my aim is to ensure that matters can be adjudicated upon and resolved as soon as possible.

 

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“I know it when I see it” – deprivation of liberty

Posted on June 11, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

 

Readers will know that I don’t always agree with Mostyn J on issues of deprivation of liberty, but I think that he makes some very powerful points in this case and he makes them well.

 

Bournemouth Borough Council v PS 2015

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCOP/2015/39.html

It involves a 28 year old, who the Court is naming “Ben”  (not his real name) who is on the autistic spectrum and has learning difficulties. The Local Authority who are providing him with care, asked the Court to make a ruling as to (a) whether the care package they were providing amounted to a deprivation of liberty and (b) whether if so, the Court would declare that this was in his best interests.

 

Firstly, Mostyn J wanted to ensure that all of the savings that Ben had accrued during his life by living frugally were not immediately eaten up by lawyers, since he would have to pay for a lawyer if represented through the Official Solicitor.  Mostyn J put different arrangements in place to ensure that Ben’s voice was heard, without draining his savings.  I applaud him for that, and it is a shame, that as he says, this may be one of the last times that this clever solution is useable.

  1. By virtue of COP Rule 2007 rule 141(1), as presently in force, Ben, as a party lacking capacity, is required to have a litigation friend. By virtue of great frugality Ben has accumulated appreciable savings from his benefits. It was foreseeable that were Ben to have a litigation friend who instructed solicitors and counsel, his savings would soon be consumed in legal costs. In my own order of 17 March 2015 I caused a recital to be inserted recording my concern that his means should not be eroded by legal costs. That same order recorded that Ben would be referred to the IMCA service for the appointment of an IMCA. That has duly happened and I have had the benefit of a helpful report from the IMCA, Katie Turner, where Ben’s wishes and feelings are clearly set out.
  2. In Re X (Deprivation of Liberty) No. 2 [2014] EWCOP 37 [2015] 2 FCR 28 Sir James Munby P at paras 12 – 15 and 19 explained that Article 6 of the 1950 Convention required that a protected person should be able to participate in the proceedings properly and satisfactorily with the opportunity of access to the court and of being heard, directly or indirectly, in the proceedings. However, these standards did not necessarily require that the protected person should be a party to the proceedings. There was no obstacle to the protected person participating in the proceedings without being a party.
  3. This ruling has been put on a statutory footing by a new rule 3A to the COP rules. This permits the protected person’s participation to be secured by the appointment of a non-legal representative. However this new rule does not take effect until 1 July 2015, some three weeks hence.
  4. In the circumstances, in what I suppose will be one of the last orders of its kind to be made, I directed that Ben be discharged as a party. I was wholly satisfied that his voice has been fully heard through the IMCA Katie Turner. Further, in relation to the question of deprivation of liberty, all relevant submissions have been fully put on both sides of the argument by counsel for the applicant and the first respondent.

 

One of the real hopes about Cheshire West when it went to the Supreme Court was that there would be a working definition of what ‘deprivation of liberty’ actually amounts to.  I didn’t like the Court of Appeal solution that it could be person specific  (i.e that a person with special needs can have less liberty and more restrictions to his liberty than an average person because his needs require it), but the Supreme Court’s acid-test is not proving much simpler than the old tangled case law.

The facts in this case which might have amounted to a deprivation of liberty were these:-

  1. There are no locks on the doors but there are sensors which would alert a staff member were he to seek to leave, although he has never tried to do so. Mr Morrison explained the situation as follows:

    “The property is such he is in theory able to leave his home on his own volition. Since he has lived at his bungalow he has never left of his own accord or verbally requested to leave without staff. However a door alarm is in place which would alert staff should Ben attempt to leave without staff attendance. If Ben were to leave the property without this having been arranged by staff they would quickly follow him, attempt to engage with him, and monitor him in the community. Ben requires one to one staff support at all times in the community. If he decided he didn’t want to return to his home, staff would firstly verbally encourage him to return, if this proved unsuccessful the Manager of Ben’s care agency would be contacted and they or another staff member would arrive and assist. If this proved unsuccessful further advice, support and attendance by Crisis Team and Social Services for crisis management would be sought and to consider whether a Mental Health Act assessment would be required. If this proved unsuccessful then consideration would be given to the attendance of the Police. Police attendance would be determined by the circumstances and if it is deemed his health and safety and that of others are at risk of harm. At all times staff would remain with Ben.”

  2. In his oral evidence Mr Morrison explained that if all attempts to persuade Ben to return home failed they would ask the police to exercise the powers under section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983 to remove Ben to a place of safety. He also explained that consistently with a duty of common humanity if staff were out with Ben and he appeared to be about to step in front of a car they would prevent him from doing so. He stated in his witness statement:

    “Ben needs 1-1 staff support in the community as he lacks road and traffic awareness. Without staff support Ben would not take into account the traffic or road conditions at any given time. If Ben was unescorted in the community it is highly likely he would walk out into the road presenting a high risk of serious harm to him and potentially others. When Ben is escorted in the community he would be guided either verbally or physically and supported to cross a road and staff would intervene should he put himself at risk of significant harm.”

  3. He accepted under cross-examination that such an act of humanity could not amount to a deprivation of liberty, and I emphatically agree.
  4. In his witness statement Mr Morrison dwelt on one particular aspect of necessary supervision. He stated:

    “There is particular risk associated with Ben accessing public toilets in the community as the result of past incidents of Ben engaging in inappropriate sexual activity in public places including toilets. Ben has no understanding of the rights of other members of the public having access to public toilets safely and that any sexual activity in a toilet is illegal. Ben is supported by staff to access public toilets should he need to do so. … He is encouraged to use the locked cubicle of the disabled toilet and staff have a key to access should this be required. When Ben uses a male communal toilet the worker either remains outside the building or goes inside to support Ben. If Ben does not want to leave the toilet a male worker would enter the toilet and encourage him to leave. If a female worker was in attendance they would remain on site and the manager of the care agency would be called for assistance and attendance. A male worker or the intensive support team worker will arrive to support Ben. If this proved unsuccessful the Intensive support team would be called for specialist support and if unsuccessful then Police would be called.”

 

Remember that in deprivation of liberty, there’s a two stage test. Firstly, are the restrictions such as to amount to a deprivation of liberty? And secondly, if so, are those restrictions in the person’s interests?

I think it is really easy to conflate the two. It is really easy to look at this and say “of course he would be stopped if he tried to run into the road” and rather than answering it as a two stage question to simply combine the two, ending up with “someone with Ben’s difficulties would and should be stopped from running into the road, so no deprivation of liberty”  – but that’s a re-set to the Court of Appeal take on Cheshire West.

The comparison is not of Ben with other people with his difficulties and the liberty that they enjoy, but of Ben with other twenty-eight year olds, or Ben with other adults. Other adults are allowed to leave the place where they live, and are not going to be brought back by the police.  (unless their liberty is being deprived as a result of the criminal justice system, or secure accommodation, or the Mental Health Act, or a Deprivation of Liberty under the MCA).  You might consider it to be daft or irresponsible to give Ben the freedom to leave his home and go wherever he wants even if that’s in the middle of the night, but that’s why there’s the second limb – are the restrictions in his best interests?

Whether they are in his best interests or not, doesn’t stop the fact that the restrictions on his life amount to his liberty  being deprived, that’s a deprivation of liberty.

I think there’s also a blurring of whether deprivation of liberty is to be taken with a silent word ‘complete’ in there.  Few would argue that a man locked up in a prison cell, told when to eat and sleep and when he can exercise or go outside is a complete deprivation of liberty, and that what Ben is experiencing is not qualitively the same thing at all. But the Act doesn’t talk about ‘complete’ deprivation, and nor do the Supreme Court.

 

As Mostyn J says, the fuzziness around the edges of deprivation of liberty lead to applications of this kind being made, and as we saw at the outset, they don’t always make things better for Ben and people like him. He could have had all of his savings chewed up by a technical legal debate that he couldn’t care less about, because the chances are whether a Judge decides that his circumstances amount to a deprivation of liberty or not, the Judge is going to go on and say that the restrictions are in his best interests.

 

  1. In her lecture Lady Hale frankly stated that the decision of the Supreme Court of 19 March 2014 has had “alarming practical consequences”. I was told by Miss Davies that in the immediate aftermath of the decision the rate of suspected DOLs cases in this local authority rose by 1000% (it has recently reduced to 800%). This local authority is one of three in Dorset. Statistics from the Department of Health state that in the six month period immediately following the decision 55,000 DOLs applications were made, an eightfold increase on 2013-14 figures.
  2. The resource implications in terms of time and money are staggering. In the Tower Hamlets case I stated at para 60:

    “Notwithstanding the arrival of the streamlined procedure recently promulgated by the Court of Protection Practice Direction 10AA there will still be tens if not hundreds of thousands of such cases and hundreds of thousands if not millions of documents to be processed. The streamlined procedure itself requires the deployment of much man and womanpower in order to identify, monitor and process the cases. Plainly all this will cost huge sums, sums which I would respectfully suggest are better spent on the front line rather than on lawyers.”

  3. I do not criticise this local authority in the slightest for bringing this case. In the light of the decision of the Supreme Court local authorities have to err on the side of caution and bring every case, however borderline, before the court. For if they do not, and a case is later found to be one of deprivation of liberty, there may be heavy damages claims (and lawyers’ costs) to pay. I remain of the view that the matter needs to be urgently reconsidered by the Supreme Court.

Although I disagree with Mostyn J about the merits of returning to the Court of Appeal Cheshire West decision, I can’t argue with him on the underlined passage. This is not public money being well spent to make people’s lives better. This is a huge amount of money being expended to achieve very little.

 

Mostyn J’s view on the individual case is that the current circumstances do not amount to a deprivation of liberty and that it would only arise at the point where the police were asked to bring him back

 

I cannot say that I know that Ben is being detained by the state when I look at his position. Far from it. I agree with Mr Mullins that he is not. First, he is not under continuous supervision. He is afforded appreciable privacy. Second, he is free to leave. Were he to do so his carers would seek to persuade him to return but such persuasion would not cross the line into coercion. The deprivation of liberty line would only be crossed if and when the police exercised powers under the Mental Health Act. Were that to happen then a range of reviews and safeguards would become operative. But up to that point Ben is a free man. In my judgment, on the specific facts in play here, the acid test is not met. Ben is not living in a cage, gilded or otherwise.

Famously, a group of professionals working in the field were given case studies about various scenarios and asked to conclude whether each was, or was not, a deprivation of liberty and there was barely any consensus. Have things got better post Cheshire West, or are we now arguing relentlessly about ‘acid tests’ and ‘freedom to leave and ‘continuous supervision”?

 

What I like most about Mostyn J is that you never leave one of his judgments without having learned something new. There are not many people who would produce both poetry and an American case about hard core pornography to prove a point, but Mostyn J is one of them, and he has enriched my day by doing so.  I also believe that this case is now legal authority for both the elephant test and ‘if it looks like a duck’ and should you need to demonstrate those principles, you may pray this case in aid.   [The formulation of the duck principle is expressed in slightly different wording to the traditional use, so beware of a pedant challenging you]

 

  1. The continuing legal controversy shows how difficult it is to pin down a definition of what is a deprivation of liberty (i.e. detention by the state) as opposed to a restriction on movement or nothing beyond humane and empathetic care. It has been said on a number of occasions by the Strasbourg Court that the difference is merely one of degree or intensity, and not one of nature or substance (see, for example, Stanev v Bulgaria (2012) 55 EHRR 22 at para 115). Ultimately I think that whether a factual situation does or does not satisfy the acid test is likely to be determined by the “I know it when I see it” legal technique. That received its most famous expression from Justice Potter Stewart in the US Supreme Court in Jacobellis v Ohio (1964) 378 U.S. 184, an obscenity case, where he stated “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [of hard-core pornography]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.” The technique has been expressed in zoological metaphor. In Cadogan Estates Ltd v Morris [1998] EWCA Civ 1671, a case about a claim for a new lease, Stuart-Smith LJ stated at para 17 “this seems to me to be an application of the well known elephant test. It is difficult to describe, but you know it when you see it”. Another expression is the well known aphorism attributed to the American poet James Whitcomb Riley who wrote “when I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck”. The case of Stanev was perfectly obviously one of rigorous state detention. In describing Mr Stanev’s circumstances the court referred to the “severity of the regime”. The complainant was held in dire conditions in a remote compound enclosed by a high metal fence. Apart from the administration of medication, no therapeutic activities were organised for residents, who led passive, monotonous lives. The complainant needed prior permission to leave the compound, even to visit the nearby village. He had been denied permission to travel on many occasions by the management. In accordance with a practice with no legal basis, residents who left the premises for longer than the authorised period were treated as fugitives and were searched for by the police. The complainant had in fact been arrested by the police on one occasion.
  2. One does not need to reach for many legal tomes to realise that this was unquestionably a case of deprivation of liberty. The Strasbourg court knew it when it saw it.
  3. In KC v Poland [2014] ECHR 1322 a 72 year old widow, under the apparent care of a social guardian, who had previously been declared to be partially incapacitated, was placed by a court, against her wishes, in a care home on account of chronic schizophrenia and a disorder of the central nervous system. She could ask for permission to leave the care home on her own during the day. When she asked for the court order to be varied to allow her to leave for one hour a day to go to the shops and to allow her to stay in her room all day, this request was declined by the court on the basis that it was provided for by the internal regulations of the care home. The Polish government’s position was that she had never requested permission to leave on her own even for a short period of time. However, and unsurprisingly, the government did not contest that she had been deprived of her liberty under Article 5. It knew it when it saw it. The court, inevitably, agreed. At para 51 it stated:

    “In the present case, although the applicant has been declared only partially incapacitated and although the Government submitted that she could ask to leave the social care home on her own during the day, they did not contest that she had been deprived of her liberty. She was compulsory placed in the social care home, against her will, on the basis of a court decision. Therefore, the responsibility of the authorities for the situation complained of is engaged.”

  4. In my opinion that was a very obvious case of state detention

 

The problem with “I know it when I see it” is that it is going to be completely subjective. As Mostyn J pointed out, if a Local Authority worker or lawyer decides “I know it when I see it” and this isn’t a Deprivation of Liberty, and someone later challenges that it was and was an unlawful one, that then hangs on what a Judge will decide when he or she runs the “I know it when I see it” exercise. If they disagree with the LA, financial consequences will rack up. It is risk and uncertainty, and who wants risk and uncertainty?  (other than casinos and fans of Game of Thrones)

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Gilded cage – junior edition

Posted on April 1, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

 

Those of you who follow deprivation of liberty cases will be aware that the landscape is markedly different after the Supreme Court in Cheshire West.  Just how different remains to be seen, as individual cases come before the Courts and are tackled.

 

Keehan J was faced with a difficult concrete example of the uncertainty following Cheshire West in

 

Re D (A Child :Deprivation of liberty) 2015

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Fam/2015/922.html

 

This case involved a boy, not quite sixteen, with considerable difficulties.

D was born on 23 April 1999 and is 15 years of age. He was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder at the age of 4, with Asperger’s Syndrome at the age of 7 and with Tourette’s syndrome at the age of 8.

 

He had been admitted to hospital for psychiatric treatment as a result and is just about to be discharged into a residential care setting. He had been on a locked psychiatric ward for 15 months. This is obviously a very high-end example.

 

In this case, as a result of the Cheshire West decision, there was considerable dispute about whether D was being deprived of his liberty and whether his parents consent to this was sufficient to allow this or whether a DoLs authorisation was required.

The hospital trust considered that DoLS authorisation was required and that to conclude that D’s parents had the right to consent to D being deprived of his liberty was too broad a view of PR.

The Local Authority considered that D’s parents were consenting, and thus this was not a deprivation of liberty in the DoLS sense.

  1. The Applicant Trust submits that the circumstances in which D lives at Hospital B satisfy the first limb of the Cheshire West test namely:

    “the objective component of the confinement in a particular restricted place for a not negligible length of time.”

  2. Further the Trust submits that D’s parents cannot consent to his placement at Hospital B because such a decision, to consent to what would otherwise amount to a deprivation of liberty, falls outside the ‘zone of parental responsibility’.
  3. Accordingly, the Trust submits the appropriate course is to seek the court’s approval of D’s placement under the inherent jurisdiction of the High Court.
  4. The local authority adopts a diametrically opposed stance. It submits that the circumstances of D’s placement do not amount to a deprivation of liberty. Further, it submits that the decision of D’s parents to consent to his placement at Hospital B falls within the proper exercise of parental responsibility. Accordingly what might otherwise constitute a deprivation of liberty does not do so because the second and third limbs of the test in Cheshire West are not satisfied namely:

    ” (b) the subjective component of lack of valid consent; and

    (c) the attribution of responsibility to the state”.

This has substantial implications – all disabled children who are receiving care from the State and whose liberty is being restricted (in order to keep them safe) on the Trust’s interpretation of Cheshire West would need to have that deprivation of liberty authorised – even if the parents were consenting. The real bad news there is that for people under 16, the Mental Capacity Act 2005 doesn’t cover them and such deprivation of liberty would have to be authorised under the Children Act 1989.  Which means, to spell it out, placing all of those disabled children in Secure Accommodation.

 

Which also means making Court applications. Which also means the residential homes that are caring for these disabled children needing to go through the registration process to qualify as Secure Units.

 

It is an interpretation of Cheshire West which does make logical sense from the judgment, but which has immensely worrying consequences. Not least that the Secure Accommodation provisions might well not be met for these children and the alternative would be that carers at the residential units would thus have no power to restrict the children’s movements  (for example, not being able to stop them from running into the road)

 

[I note that Keehan J in this case specifically rules that the High Court can authorise deprivation of liberty for children under the inherent jurisdiction. I’m really rather dubious about that. I know the inherent jurisdiction is a magic bullet for every situation with almost limitless powers, but to use it to sidestep s25 Secure Accommodation provisions seems to me to have real difficulties with s100 – particularly s100 (4) (a) which bars granting leave to a Local Authority to make an application under the inherent jurisdiction if there is a statutory order the LA could apply for instead, and s100 (4) (b) which says that leave can’t be granted unless the Court is satisfied that significant harm would result to the child otherwise. Would anyone ever appeal it? probably not. ]

 

Any Local Authority lawyer dealing with deprivation of liberty or disabled / disturbed children is really really nervous about how this case is going to turn out. It is a big test case.

Here’s the practical arrangements for D, to consider whether they amount to a deprivation of liberty

Dr K describes D’s life at Hospital B as follows:

“D is residing on X one of the two buildings which make up the adolescent service. Each building is a six-bedded unit. Each young person has their own bedroom, and shares bathroom and living areas with the other patients. There is a school room attached to each building, and all the students receive full time education provided from a special school outreach service.”

“D’s unit is staffed 24 hours a day.

It has a locked front door. D does not leave the ward without a staff member or his family accompanying him. He has been offered opportunity to undertake small tasks by himself, such as emptying the bins, but he says he is scared. Unescorted leave would be considered as part of his treatment package to see how he fares.

D has his own bedroom, which he can access whilst he is on the unit at his leisure. He shares a bathroom and residential areas within the building.

D is on general observations. This means that he is checked on every half an hour or so. However, D seeks out contact with staff more regularly within that time and this means that he is under direct observation on a much more regular basis. I am of the view that he is under constant supervision and control.

His school is integral to the building. He goes off site for all relevant school activities such as, to music sessions on site, and to activities which take place in the community, such as shopping and cafes. He leaves the unit on a daily basis, accompanied by staff.

He is independent in his self-care, and requires minimal support for this. He eats a varied diet independently, and is able to vocalise his preferences.

Attempts to engage him in more serious conversation unnerves him, and he will try to deflect the subject, or directly challenge the person, by telling them that he is not happy. I am of the view that this is reflected in the anxiety he has shown around his discharge. My team will need to manage this carefully within the discharge process.

When out in the community, D is supported one-to-one. He has stated that he would be anxious to go out on his own, and prefers to be accompanied by staff. On occasion he has to be reminded about his behaviour when out, as he might stare and pull faces at strangers. He has been encouraged to do some tasks independently, such as emptying the bins outside, but he has stated that he was too anxious to do it by himself and so he is accompanied when doing this.”

 

That does seem, from Cheshire West, to be deprivation of liberty, and indeed Keehan J found it to be so, and all parties accepted that those circumstances did amount to a deprivation of liberty following Cheshire West.

In the ultimate analysis counsel for the Trust and counsel for the local authority accepted that the circumstances in which D was accommodated amounted to a deprivation of liberty subject to the issue of consent to the placement.

On the facts of this case I am wholly satisfied that D lives in conditions which amount to a deprivation of his liberty. He is under constant supervision and control. The fact that D enjoys residing in the unit in Hospital B, that he is comfortable there and readily seeks out and engages with members of staff are irrelevant factors when considering whether there is a deprivation of liberty. So too are the facts that the arrangements have been made in his welfare best interests and have been, and are, to his benefit. A gilded cage is still a cage.

 

The issue then, was whether the parents could consent to D’s liberty being deprived in this way.

  1. Mr Cowen, on behalf of the local authority sought to contend that:

    i) Cheshire West did not apply to those cases where the young person concerned was under the age of 16 years;

    ii) in such a case the decision in Cheshire West, that the disability or mental disorder of the young person concerned was irrelevant to the question of whether there was a deprivation of liberty, did not apply; and

    iii) the court should prefer and apply the ‘relative normality’ test propounded by the Court of Appeal in P and Q.

  2. I do not accept any of those propositions. The protection of Article 5 of the Convention and the fundamental right to liberty applies to the whole of the human race; young or old and to those with disabilities just as much to those without. It may be those rights have sometimes to be limited or restricted because of the young age or disabilities of the individual but ‘the starting point should be the same as that for everyone else’, per Baroness Hale: Cheshire West at paragraph 45.
  3. The majority in Cheshire West decided that what it means to be deprived of liberty is the same for everyone, whether or not they have a physical or mental disability: per Baroness Hale in Cheshire West at paragraph 46.
  4. I accept the essential ratio of Cheshire West does not apply to the circumstances of this case. Nevertheless, in my view, the acid test definitions of a deprivation of liberty apply as much to D as they did to the subjects of the appeals in Cheshire West.
  5. In the premises I do not accept the local authority’s third submission that I should reject the approach of the Supreme Court in Cheshire West and apply the Court of Appeal’s test of ‘relative normality’. I do not understand the logic of the submission that I should hold that the decision of the Supreme Court does not apply to the facts of this case but then resurrect and apply the test propounded by the Court of Appeal which was expressly rejected by the majority of the Supreme Court.
  6. The essential issue in this case is whether D’s parents can, in the proper exercise of parental responsibility, consent to his accommodation in Hospital B and thus render what would otherwise be a deprivation of liberty not a deprivation of liberty (ie the 2nd limb in Cheshire West is not satisfied).

 

That’s quite dense, so I’ll walk you through it. The argument was that Cheshire West, being a Mental Capacity Act case, doesn’t strictly apply to minors. The Judge said that this was right, but that the Supreme Court’s acid test as to what sort of restrictions amounted to a deprivation of liberty DID apply also to children, and that the Local Authority’s argument that the restrictions in place for D were the sort of restrictions that a child like D would have (relative normality) was exactly the decision reached by the Court of Appeal in Cheshire West that had been rejected.

When considering whether D’s liberty had been deprived, his physical or mental disabilities were not a relevant factor  – they might well be relevant when later considering whether those restrictions were the right thing for him but not at the stage of considering whether they amounted to a deprivation of liberty.

The argument that children like D need these restrictions, so they aren’t a deprivation of liberty in the way that they would be for a child who didn’t have D’s issues was completely rejected by the High Court.

The sole issue was whether the parents could exercise parental responsibility to CONSENT to those restrictions, thus making the deprivation of liberty one that was effectively consented to, and thus not a breach of Article 5.  IF the parents could consent, then there would not NEED to be a court order or declaration to justify the article 5 breach, since the restrictions would be by consent and the breach would fall away.

 

Mr McKendrick for the Trust set out the arguments for why the Trust considered that the parents could NOT consent.  (I have to confess that in reading this, much as I want the LA to win this argument and so much rides on it, I was thinking that Mr McKendrick’s points were right)

48. Mr McKendrick reminds me that Dr K does not consider D to be Gillick competent to consent to his residence, treatment or care. He referred me to the provision of the new MHA Code of Practice which comes into effect on 1 April 2015. Paragraphs 19.47 – 19.48 provide:

      1. 19.47 An additional and significant factor when considering whether the proposed intervention in relation to a child or young person is a restriction of liberty or amounts to a deprivation of liberty is the role of parental control and supervision. Practitioners will need to determine whether the care regime for, and restrictions placed on, the child or young person accord with the degree of parenting control and supervision that would be expected for a child or young person of that age. For example, whereas it is usual for a child of under 12 years not to be allowed out unaccompanied without their parent’s permission, this would not usually be an acceptable restriction on a 17 year old. Account also needs to be taken of the particular experience of the child or young person. For example, a younger child who has been caring for their parent, including shopping for the household and/or accompanying their parent to medical appointments, might not be used to being prevented from going out unaccompanied.
      1. 19.48 Prior to the Supreme Court’s judgment in Cheshire West, case law had established that persons with parental responsibility cannot authorise a deprivation of liberty. Cheshire West clarified the elements establishing a deprivation of liberty, but did not expressly decide whether a person with parental responsibility could, and if so in what circumstances, consent to restrictions that would, without their consent, amount to a deprivation of liberty. In determining whether a person with parental responsibility can consent to the arrangements which would, without their consent, amount to a deprivation of liberty, practitioners will need to consider and apply developments in case law following Cheshire West. In determining the limits of parental responsibility, decision-makers must carefully consider and balance: (i) the child’s right to liberty under article 5, which should be informed by article 37 of the UNCRC, (ii) the parent’s right to respect for the right to family life under article 8, which includes the concept of parental responsibility for the care and custody of minor children, and (iii) the child’s right to autonomy which is also protected under article 8. Decision makers should seek their own legal advice in respect of cases before them. (Chapter 26 provides guidance on the use of restrictive interventions.)
  2. The Trust submitted that D’s parents cannot consent to a deprivation of his liberty in Hospital B for 11 reasons: i) D has the same Article 5 ECHR rights as an adult and the same definition of deprivation of liberty applies to him as it does to adults;

    ii) D has a mental disorder, he is deprived of his liberty pursuant to Article 5 (1) (e) – see Cheshire at paragraph 6, per Baroness Hale: “Article 5(1)(e) permits the lawful detention of persons of unsound mind, but that detention has to conform to the Convention standards of legality, and the doctrine of necessity did not provide HL with sufficient protection against arbitrary deprivation of his liberty. The court was struck by the difference between the careful machinery for authorising the detention and treatment of compulsory patients under the Mental Health Act and the complete lack of any such machinery for compliant incapacitated patients such as HL”;

    iii) D has been resident on a locked psychiatric ward for fifteen months;

    iv) D can only leave that ward with adult 1:1 supervision;

    v) whilst his parents consented to his placement, such consent much be seen in the context they could not accommodate him at their home;

    vi) he does not lead a life of relative normalcy;

    vii) D is fifteen and shortly will be afforded the protection of the MCA to authorise and review any deprivation of liberty occasioned by being deprived of his liberty at Hospital B (by way of application of s. 4A MCA, given Schedule A1 would not apply to him until he is 18);

    viii) to rely (effectively solely) on parental consent, when D’s parents cannot accommodate and care for him (and have no or other limited options for their son) is an insufficient safeguard to protect D’s Article 5 ECHR rights;

    ix) parental consent over a period of fifteen months, as means of review and safeguard, is not compliant with Article 5 (4);

    x) it is out with the reasonable zone of parental control to authorise the deprivation of liberty for such a prolonged period of time and is inconsistent with a child’s Article 5 ECHR right;

    xi) hospital clinicians remain uneasy about caring for and depriving a child of his liberty, given the length of time and given his age, with only authority provided by way of parental consent.

  3. The Trust concludes its submissions as follows:

    The applicant recognises there may be cases where parents can authorise the deprivation of liberty of a younger child for a shorter period of time, in a hospital setting. The applicants are not certain the concession approved by the court in RK is correct. Indeed it seems clear parents can authorise the first stage of the deprivation of liberty test (i.e. they can deprive, rather than just restrict, the liberty of their children, at home) but that such deprivation is not an Article 5 deprivation of liberty, because it is not attributable to the state. Each case ultimately must be considered on its facts (however unpalatable such an approach may be in respect of public resource considerations).

    Whilst the applicant (in many ways) would gratefully submit that D is not deprived of his liberty, it does not consider it is appropriate for a public body to interpret the law in a manner disadvantageous to the protection of a vulnerable child’s rights. Whilst the applicant would readily adopt a “pragmatic approach” as identified by Gross LK in RK, the applicant submits the preferred conclusion, on the facts of these proceedings, is that D is deprived of his liberty, such deprivation is attributable to the state and his parents cannot provide valid consent.

 

Powerful stuff.

Here comes the decision.

  1. When considering the exercise of parental responsibility in this case and whether a decision falls within the zone of parental responsibility, it is inevitable and necessary that I take into account D’s autism and his other diagnosed conditions. I do so because they are important and fundamental factors to take into account when considering his maturity and his ability to make decisions about his day to day life.
  2. An appropriate exercise of parental responsibility in respect of a 5 year old child will differ very considerably from what is or is not an appropriate exercise of parental responsibility in respect of a 15 year old young person.
  3. The decisions which might be said to come within the zone of parental responsibility for a 15 year old who did not suffer from the conditions with which D has been diagnosed will be of a wholly different order from those decisions which have to be taken by parents whose 15 year old son suffers with D’s disabilities. Thus a decision to keep such a 15 year old boy under constant supervision and control would undoubtedly be considered an inappropriate exercise of parental responsibility and would probably amount to ill treatment. The decision to keep an autistic 15 year old boy who has erratic, challenging and potentially harmful behaviours under constant supervision and control is a quite different matter; to do otherwise would be neglectful. In such a case I consider the decision to keep this young person under constant supervision and control is the proper exercise of parental responsibility.
  4. The parents of this young man are making decisions, of which he is incapable, in the welfare best interests of their son. It is necessary for them to do so to protect him and to provide him with the help and support he needs.
  5. I acknowledge that D is not now cared for at home nor ‘in a home setting’. His regime of care and treatment was advised by his treating clinicians and supported by his parents. They wanted to secure the best treatment support and help for their son. They have done so. It has proved extremely beneficial for D who is now ready to move to a new residential home out of a hospital setting. What other loving and caring parent would have done otherwise?
  6. Those arrangements are and were made on the advice of the treating clinicians. All professionals involved in his life and in reviewing his care and treatment are agreed that these arrangements are overwhelmingly in D’s best interests. On the facts of this case, why on public policy or human rights grounds should these parents be denied the ability to secure the best medical treatment and care for their son? Why should the state interfere in these parents’ role to make informed decisions about their son’s care and living arrangements?
  7. I can see no reasons or justifications for denying the parents that role or permitting the state to interfere in D’s life or that of his family.
  8. I accept the position might well be very different if the parents were acting contrary to medical advice or having consented to his placement at Hospital B, they simply abandoned him or took no interest or involvement in his life thereafter.
  9. The position could not be more different here. D’s parents have regular phone calls with him. They regularly visit him at the unit. Every weekend D has supported visits to the family home. He greatly enjoys spending time at home with his parents and his younger brother.
  10. In my judgment, on the facts of this case, it would be wholly disproportionate, and fly in the face of common sense, to rule that the decision of the parents to place D at Hospital B was not well within the zone of parental responsibility. Conclusions
  11. I am satisfied that the circumstances in which D is accommodated would amount to a deprivation of liberty but for his parents’ consent to his placement there.
  12. I am satisfied that, on the particular facts of this case, the consent of D’s parents to his placement at Hospital B, with all of the restrictions placed upon his life there, falls within the ‘zone of parental responsibility’. In the exercise of their parental responsibility for D, I am satisfied they have and are able to consent to his placement.

 

So whilst for D, a gilded cage is still a cage and one doesn’t take into account his disabilities, whether or not his parents are able to consent to him being in that cage is a decision that CAN take into account his disabilities.

 

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Bodey and DoLs

Posted on March 23, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

Mr Justice Bodey, sitting in the High Court dealt with a case involving a 93 year old woman with severe dementia, and had to resolve whether the protective mechanisms that had been put in place by the Local Authority amounted to a deprivation of liberty (or DoLs).  And if so, whether the Court would authorise those.

 

W City Council v Mrs L  2015

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCOP/2015/20.html

 

This might have wider implications, because the Court were being asked specifically about two issues :-

 

1. The deprivation was in the woman’s own home, rather than in accommodation provided by the State.

2. The woman herself was not objecting to the restrictions, or kicking against them.

Unusually here, it was the LA who were saying to the Court that their actions amounted to a deprivation of liberty, and the family were saying that it wasn’t.

Here’s what the restrictions amounted to:-

  1. As I have said, Mrs L is 93. She was widowed in 1976 and has lived since about that time, 39 years, in her current home, the upper floor flat in a 2-storey building. She has 4 adult daughters, 3 of whom live in England and one abroad. Her daughter PC is, as I have said, her litigation friend. If I may say so, the family seem to have done extraordinarily well in caring proactively for Mrs L, who was diagnosed with dementia in 2004. Since that time, her condition has deteriorated, and understandably is deteriorating. Her family have adapted her furniture and routines to take account of all her needs. She fell twice in 2013, the first time injuring her hip and requiring an operation. The second time in November 2013 she suffered no injury, but became disorientated and wandered away from her home very unsuitably clothed into the local town. She was returned home by the Police or Social Services. This event led to the involvement of the Local Authority.
  2. At that time, the garden at Mrs L’s home was not enclosed. In the light of Mrs L’s having wandered off, the family arranged for a fence and two gates to be erected, and for the garden to be generally improved. The gates are side by side: one to use on foot, and the other a double gate to admit vehicles, presumably for the benefit of the young couple who live with their children in the ground floor flat. The pedestrian gate latch is of the kind often seen on bridleway gates, having a vertical metal lever on the gate, which is pulled away from the gate post to open the gate, and which springs back to engage with a clip on the gate post in order to re-close the gate. The double gates are secured by a metal throw-over loop, which holds the two central uprights together. The front door of Mrs L’s flat which leads into this garden area is locked with a Yale lock, which Mrs L can and does operate herself. This enables her to have access to her garden as and when she wishes it. All agree that she gets great pleasure from being able to go out and enjoy the garden.
  3. The Local Authority have undertaken assessments of the safety of the above arrangements. They have concluded that whilst neither of the gate latches lock, they are quite stiff and heavy to operate. There was an occasion when Mrs L was observed to open the pedestrian gate when asked to do so. This was before a wedge was added to the gate by Mrs L’s downstairs neighbours (to stop their young children getting out) which has made the gate more difficult to open. The garden is felt by everyone to be sufficiently secure, although with an unavoidable risk that someone might leave the gate open. At night, there are door sensors which switch themselves on in the evening and off in the morning. They would be activated if Mrs L were to leave the property at night, although she has not in fact done so in the 6 months or so since they were installed. An alarm call would automatically be made to one of her daughters, who lives nearby. If that daughter were not available, the call would re-route go to the emergency services. This would enable Mrs L to be guided safely back home.
  4. Mrs L is happy and contented where she lives. A care package is provided for her by the Local Authority’s specialist dementia carers, who visit her 3 times a day. She is orientated within the property, steady on her feet, motivated to engage in simple activities, and has a clear interest in her garden. There is a documented history of her strong sense of belonging in her current home, and of her fierce sense of independence. She displays an acceptable level of mobility. Her immediate environment can be seen to give her significant pleasure and stimulation. She is able to enjoy the company of her cat. All agree it would cause her distress to be moved to residential care. All agree too that the current arrangements of family and Social Services working together are in Mrs L’s best interests and work well.
  5. The facts on which the Local Authority relies in particular for saying that the arrangements amount to a deprivation of Mrs L’s liberty are: (a) that the garden gate is kept shut, thereby preventing or deterring Mrs L from leaving the property unless escorted; (b) that the door sensors are activated at night, so that Mrs L could and would be escorted home if she left; and (c) that there might be circumstances in an emergency, say if the sensors failed to operate at night, when the front door of the flat might have to be locked on its mortice lock, which Mrs L cannot operate (as distinct from the Yale lock, which she can). She would then be confined to her flat. These arrangements are said by the Local Authority to be integral to its care plan for Mrs L, which is overseen by her social worker. The Local Authority thus asserts that it is responsible, as a public body, for a deprivation of Mrs L’s liberty.

 

This is a good illustration of how unsatisfactory things are at present with DoLs.  On those facts, my gut feeling would be that it ISN’T an article 5 deprivation of libery. BUT, given that if you get this wrong, compensation is payable to the person being deprived of their liberty (and at least one Judge has ordered that that is on a daily rate), would I be sure? Or even fairly sure? I can absolutely see why this LA wanted to make the application and have a Judge decide.

 

Mr Justice Bodey sets out the law very well (this would be a good “go-to” judgment for these issues)

 

On the two key issues in the case, Bodey J said that both were relevant factors in weighing up whether the restrictions amounted to a deprivation of liberty, but neither of them were determinative (i.e a person CAN be deprived of liberty in their own home and a person CAN be deprived of their liberty even if they seem perfectly happy about it, but whether or not they ARE being deprived of their liberty depends on the facts of the case)

 

23. ..it is overwhelmingly clear that Mrs L is where she always wanted to be when she was capacitous: and where not only has she not shown or expressed any dissatisfaction with the arrangements, but has demonstrated positively a continuing satisfaction with being in her own home. Further, her home is clearly not a ‘placement’ in the sense of a person being taken or taking herself to some institution or hospital.

  1. The fact of Mrs L referring to, and demonstrating by her demeanour, this continuing contentment in her home is not in issue. It is right that she is of course not capacitated. Otherwise, this case would not be happening. But I do find that she is capable of expressing her wishes and feelings, as is referred to in the documents and shown in such things as for example her choice of clothes, the choice of what she does around the property, and in her going in and out of the garden at will. Although I accept the general need for the caution which Miss Hirst urges me to exercise, this consideration must be relevant in the evaluation of whether Mrs L is being ‘deprived’ of her ‘liberty’ within Article 5.
  2. This case is thus different from one involving institutional accommodation with arrangements designed to confine the person for his or her safety, and where that person, or someone on his or her behalf, is challenging the need for such confinement. At paragraph 38 of Cheshire West Lady Hale spoke about ‘the presence or absence of coercion’ being a relevant consideration. As I have said, the range of criteria to be taken into account includes the type, duration, effects and manner of implementation of the arrangements put in place. The fact that those criteria are prefaced by the words ‘such as’ demonstrates that they are not intended to be exhaustive. It is a question of an overall review of all the particular circumstances of the case.
  3. I observe too that Article 5 refers to everyone having a right to ‘liberty and security of person’ [emphasis added]. Mrs L’s ‘security’ is being achieved by the arrangements put into place as being in her best interests, even though involving restrictions. Such restrictions are not continuous or complete. Mrs L has ample time to spend as she wishes, and the carer’s visits are the minimum necessary for her safety and wellbeing, being largely concerned to ensure that she is eating, taking liquids and coping generally in other respects.
  4. This is a finely balanced case; but on the totality of everything that I have read in the files, I have come to the conclusion and find that whilst the arrangements (clearly) constitute restrictions on Mrs L’s liberty, they do not quite cross the line to being a deprivation of it. If I were wrong about that, and if there is a deprivation of Mrs L’s liberty, is it to be imputed to the State? On the facts, I find not. This is a shared arrangement set up by agreement with a caring and pro-active family: and the responsibility of the State is, it seems to me, diluted by the strong role which the family has played and continues to play. I do not consider in such circumstances that the mischief of State interference at which Article 5 was and is directed, sufficiently exists.
  5. In these circumstances, my decision is simply that there is no deprivation of Mrs L’s liberty. This is not per se because Mrs L is in her own home; nor because she wishes to be there. Those features alone would not necessarily stop particular arrangements amounting to a deprivation of liberty. Rather it is a finely balanced decision taken on all the facts of the particular case. The question of the court’s authorising the arrangements concerned does not in the circumstances arise, although I would have authorised them if it did. The question of Mrs L’s up to date best interests is better considered back in Birmingham by the District Judge, and I anticipate that it should be capable of being dealt with by consent.

 

 

Even Professionals can find it difficult to know if a person is being deprived of their liberty…

Even Professionals can find Deprivation of Liberty confusing

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Mostyn Powers

Posted on March 16, 2015 by suesspiciousminds

 

Long-term readers will have picked up by now that there’s always something of value in a judgment by Mostyn J.  He follows that Raymond Chandler dictum of putting a diamond on every page.

 

This one follows his earlier decision (which many of us questioned at the time) that he wasn’t bound by the Supreme Court in Cheshire West and went with the principle that had been rejected by them to decide that a person wasn’t being deprived of their liberty

https://suesspiciousminds.com/2014/11/20/have-we-just-given-up-on-the-notion-of-the-supreme-court-being-supreme/

In that case, Mostyn J declared that he was bound by the decision of the Supreme Court in Cheshire West, though making it plain that he didn’t agree with it, but then didn’t follow it, distinguishing his case on its facts. He felt that it was something that the Supreme Court should look at again, and invited an appeal.

 

This is the follow-up judgment after the Court of Appeal reached the entirely unexpected conclusion that the Supreme Court had already decided that the FACT of whether a person was deprived of their liberty didn’t take into account whether their disabilities made that necessary, that’s for the second stage as to whether the Court should authorise that deprivation of liberty.

Readers may recall a previous occasion on which Mostyn J didn’t take it entirely in his stride when the Court of Appeal overruled him and he disagreed with their view.  He drops the “with the profoundest of respect” bomb during the judgment where he has to deal with the case again.

https://suesspiciousminds.com/2014/10/26/with-the-profoundest-respect/

 

So, given that scenario, one is following the firework code when reading Mostyn J’s decision.

Rochdale v KW 2015

http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCOP/2015/13.html

 

Firstly, here’s what happened in  the Court of Appeal  (I haven’t seen this reported yet, but given that the original Rochdale v KW 2014 unleashed the contents of a cattery into a pigeon coop, it is important)

The appeal was fixed for a full oral hearing on 4 or 5 February 2015. However, on 30 January 2015 the Court of Appeal allowed the appeal against my decision by consent and without a hearing purportedly pursuant to the terms of CPR PD52A para 6.4. Its order provided as follows:

“UPON reading the appeal bundle filed with the court.

AND UPON the Respondent confirming that it does not intend to oppose the appeal

IT IS ORDERED that:

1. This appeal is allowed.

2. For the review period as defined below, KW is to reside and receive care at home pursuant to arrangements made by Rochdale Council and set out in the Care Plan; and to the extent that the restrictions in place pursuant to the Care Plan are a deprivation of KW’s liberty, such deprivation of KW’s liberty is hereby authorised.

3. If a change or changes to the Care Plan that render it more restrictive have as a matter of urgent necessity been implemented Rochdale Council must apply to the Court of Protection for an urgent review of this order on the first available date after the implementation of any such changes.

4. If a change or changes to the Care Plan that render it more restrictive are proposed (but are not required as a matter of urgent necessity) Rochdale Council must apply to the Court of Protection for review of this order before any such changes are made.

5. In any event. Rochdale Council must make an application to the Court no less than one month before the expiry the review period as defined below for a review of this order if at that time the Care Plan still applies to KW. Such application shall be made in accordance with any Rules and Practice Directions in effect at the date of the application being filed or, if not otherwise specified, on form COPDOL10.

6. Any review hearing shall be conducted as a consideration of the papers unless any party requests an oral hearing or the Court decides that an oral hearing is required.

7. “The review period” shall mean 12 months from the date on which this order was made or, if an application for review has been filed at Court before that date, until determination of such review application.

8. Nothing shall published that will reveal the identify of the Appellant who shall continue to be referred to as “KW” until further order pursuant to section 12 of the Administration of Justice Act 1960.

9. There shall no order for costs between the parties.

10. There shall be a detailed assessment of KW’s public funding costs.”

Attached to the order was a piece of narrative, prepared by counsel for the appellant, which provided as follows:

“Statement of reasons for allowing the appeal as required pursuant to CPR, PD52A at para 6.4.

The reason for inviting the Court of Appeal to allow the appeal by consent is that the learned judge erred in law in holding that there was not a deprivation of liberty. He was bound by the decision of the Supreme Court in P (by his litigation friend the Official Solicitor) v Cheshire West and Chester Council & ors [2014] UKSC 19; [2014] AC 986 (“Cheshire West“) to the effect that a person is deprived of their liberty in circumstances in which they are placed by the State in a limited place from which they are not free to leave. It is accepted by both parties on facts which are agreed that this was the position in the case of KW and that the learned judge also erred in holding that KW might soon not have the ability to walk or leave home on her own.”

That’s right, everyone involved in the case (except Mostyn J) wrote to the Court of Appeal saying that they thought Mostyn J had got it wrong and agreeing that there HAD been a deprivation of liberty and that the Court should authorise it.

The case then came back before Mostyn J, hence this judgment and hence this piece. I would imagine that the advocates did not have the most peaceful of sleep the night before that particular hearing.

Mostyn J did not take this terribly well.

He questioned whether the Court of Appeal had jurisdiction to make such a decision on a consent basis without actually hearing from the parties.  He has a point here, I think, it must be very unusual. Even in cases where everyone is agreed that a mistake has been made, there is usually a judgment given.

  1. CPR 52.11(3) provides:

    “The appeal court will allow an appeal where the decision of the lower court was –

    (a) wrong; or

    (b) unjust because of a serious procedural or other irregularity in the proceedings in the lower court.”

  2. CPR PD52A para 6.4 provides for a very limited derogation from this simple and necessary rule. It is headed “SECTION VI – DISPOSING OF APPLICATIONS AND APPEALS BY CONSENT” and provides:

    “Allowing unopposed appeals or applications on paper

    6.4 The appeal court will not normally make an order allowing an appeal unless satisfied that the decision of the lower court was wrong or unjust because of a serious procedural or other irregularity. The appeal court may, however, set aside or vary the order of the lower court by consent and without determining the merits of the appeal if it is satisfied that there are good and sufficient reasons for so doing. Where the appeal court is requested by all parties to allow an application or an appeal the court may consider the request on the papers. The request should set out the relevant history of the proceedings and the matters relied on as justifying the order and be accompanied by a draft order.”

  3. It can be seen that the strict terms of CPR 52.11(3) are modified by the deployment of the adverb “normally” in the first sentence. In the second sentence the sole exception to the primary rule is spelt out. An appeal may be allowed by consent “without determining the merits of the appeal if it is satisfied that there are good and sufficient reasons for so doing”. Therefore it follows that this procedure, which involves a determination on the papers and without an oral hearing, cannot be used to determine an appeal on the merits.
  4. One can see the need for this provision. Following the first instance decision there may have been a change in the law deriving from legislation or a binding decision of a higher court. In such a case it would be necessary to set aside the original decision without a determination on the merits. Similarly, a procedural order may require to be set aside without a determination on the merits because of a change of circumstances or a mistake. It is impossible to see however how this procedure could be used to overthrow on the merits the central basis of a first instance decision particularly where that involved a clear statement of legal principle in relation to the facts as found.
  5. My limited researches in the field of family law reveal that where a merits based decision has been reached at first instance, which all parties agree should be set aside on appeal, then there is a hearing and a judgment. This is consistent with the only reasonable interpretation of para 6.4. The judge whose decision is being impugned is surely entitled to no less, and there is a plain need to expose error so that later legal confusion does not arise. Thus in Bokor-Ingram v Bokor-Ingram [2009] EWCA Civ 412 Thorpe LJ held as follows:

    “1. In a judgement handed down on 23 June 2008, Charles J dismissed an application brought by the wife to set aside a consent order reached on 20 July 2006 at an FDR appointment determining her claims for ancillary relief for herself and the two children of the family.

    2. Charles J dismissed the wife’s application and refused her permission to appeal. Her application for permission was renewed to this court by a Notice of Appeal dated 7 August 2008. Wilson LJ granted permission to appeal on 30 October 2008, and that appeal was listed for hearing today and tomorrow, 4 and 5 March 2009.

    3. At the outset Mr Martin Pointer QC and Mr Jonathan Cohen QC, representing respectively the wife and the husband, informed the court that the parties had reached a comprehensive agreement to settle not only the appeal but also pending or prospective applications for the variation of the order of 20 July 2006.

    4. The agreement reached between the parties invited the court to allow the appeal, set aside the order of 20 July 2006, and to make revised orders on the wife’s applications.

    5. A short disposal might have followed but for our concern that the judgment below had already been reported at [2008] 2 FCR 527 and at [2009] 1 FLR 2001 and was causing, or was likely to cause, difficulty for specialist practitioners and judges in this field of ancillary relief.”

    Thorpe LJ then went on to give a full judgment explaining why Charles J had fallen into error.

  6. Similarly, in the recent decision of Re S-W (Children) [2015] EWCA Civ 27 it was recorded at para 4 that:

    “Neither Liverpool City Council nor the children’s guardian seeks to uphold the orders made. All parties are therefore agreed that the appeal should be allowed and that the matter should be remitted to Her Honour Judge de Haas QC, the Designated Family Judge for Liverpool.”

  7. Three full judgments followed explaining why Judge Dodds had fallen into error. Again, this was the least he could have expected and a reasoned judgment would have the effect of preventing similar mistakes in the future.
  8. The reason why in neither of these cases the Court of Appeal exercised its powers to deal with the appeal on paper, without a hearing, and by consent pursuant to para 6.4 was that in each instance it involved a determination on the merits that the judge was wrong. Therefore in each case the circumstances fell outside para 6.4.
  9. The researches of counsel, undertaken after argument was concluded before me but before this judgment was handed down, have not revealed any case where a fully reasoned decision has been overturned on the merits by consent and without a judgment. This is not surprising.

In this case the appeal was against para 6 of my order, which reflected the terms of my judgment, that the package of care provided to Katherine does not amount to a deprivation of liberty within the terms of Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights. That was the centrally, if not the only, relevant component of my judgment. It was its very ratio decidendi. By para 1 of the Court of Appeal order the appeal is allowed. That is plainly a determination on the merits. It could not be anything else. But such a determination on the merits does not fall within para 6.4.

I do rather agree with Mostyn J here. Whilst I respectfully think that he was wrong at first instance, he was wrong in a way that several very senior Judges (including two members of the Supreme Court) have agreed with.  It would have been helpful to have this issue put to bed. I happen to think that the Supreme Court have already done it, but as there appears to be judicial doubt, better to have that cleared up.

 

I also think that even if one accepts that Mostyn J was wrong and that KW’s liberty HAD been deprived, it is then a leap for the parties to agree an order between themselves that the Court of Appeal authorise such deprivation as being in KW’s best interests when frankly that particular argument has not been fully ventilated and litigated because the trial Judge ruled that on the facts he did not consider that she HAD been deprived of her liberty.

 

Where does that leave KW then?

  1. Even though the Court of Appeal appears to have taken a procedurally impermissible route, the rule of law depends on first instance judges complying scrupulously with decisions and orders from appellate courts. And so I must here, even if I happen to think that the order of the Court of Appeal is ultra vires. The allowing of the appeal should be construed as setting aside para 6 of my order, even if it does not actually say so. But does the order replace it with a declaration that Katherine is being deprived of her liberty? It does not explicitly say so, which is highly surprising. Further, para 2 of the order is phrased in highly ambiguous language. It says “to the extent that the restrictions in place pursuant to the care plan are a deprivation of KW’s liberty, such deprivation of KW’s liberty is hereby authorised.” The use of this conditional language suggests to me that Court of Appeal has not actually decided that this is a situation of state detention. What they are saying that if it is then it is authorised. In my judgment para 2 of the order does not amount to a declaration that Katherine is being deprived of her liberty.
  2. It therefore seems to me that we are back to square one with no-one knowing whether Katherine is, or is not, being detained by the state within the terms of Article 5. That issue will have to be decided at the next review hearing whether it is held under paras 3, 4 or 5 of the Court of Appeal order. Pursuant to para 6 I now direct that any review hearing will be conducted by me at an oral hearing and on the basis of full fresh evidence concerning Katherine’s circumstances. Until then Katherine’s status must be regarded as being in limbo.
  3. For the avoidance of any doubt it is my finding that the hearing ordered by para 5 of the Court of Appeal order is not a review of a determined situation of state detention but is, rather, a hearing de novo to determine if one exists.

 

Mostyn J goes further – having said that there has NOT been a decision that KW is being deprived of her liberty and there would have to be a hearing if anyone invites the Court to make such a finding, he goes on to drop this remarkable bombshell

  1. Further, it is my ruling that a hearing under paras 3 or 4 can only be triggered if the restrictive changes proposed amount to bodily restraint comparable to that which obtained in P v Cheshire West and Chester Council. Any restrictions short of that will amount to no more than arrangements for her care in her own home and would not, consistently with my previous judgments, amount to state detention. Therefore, in such circumstances there would be nothing to review under paras 3 and 4.
  2. It will be apparent from what I have written above that in the absence of a reasoned judgment from the Court of Appeal explaining why I was wrong I maintain firmly the correctness of my jurisprudential analysis in my principal decision as augmented in my Tower Hamlets decision. In this difficult and sensitive area, where people are being looked after in their own homes at the state’s expense, the law is now in a state of serious confusion.

 

So we seem to be in a position where if you go before Mostyn J, Rochdale v KW 2014 is good law, but if you go before another Judge, it may not be considered that way. The Court of Appeal sanctioned an order which had the effect of overturning the decision in Rochdale, but Mostyn J has ruled that it did not actually rule on the principle or the interpretation of the law.

That’s not really the way that precedent works. There are quite a few precedents that I don’t agree with and where I think the law has got it wrong, but it is the law and has to be followed until it is overturned or refined.  You have to be able to pick up a piece of case law and know whether it is a precedent which others may follow or if it is not. (Yes, sometimes, like H&R or even Cheshire West at CoA stage, the precedent which everyone follows is later determined to be wrong, but we all knew that those cases were being appealed)

The legal status of the principle in Rochdale v KW 2014 is not at all clear to me any longer. Mostyn J makes a compelling argument here that it remains binding on any Judge who is less senior than a High Court Judge. Equally, we know that the orders made did not stand following an appeal to the Court of Appeal. Is it law, or isn’t it?

We can’t surely have law that applies if you are before X Judge but not before Y Judge.

 

[I hope that I’ve been plain that whilst I disagreed with Mostyn J’s original call, I think he was right that there was a sufficient element of doubt that the Court of Appeal ought to have properly considered it and ruled on it. This was a decision that did not only affect the parties, but had a degree of public interest. It should not have been carved up by the parties, even if I think they were correct that the Judge had fallen into error on thinking the case could be distinguished from the principles in Cheshire West]

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Have we just given up on the notion of the Supreme Court being supreme?

Posted on November 20, 2014 by suesspiciousminds

 

After yesterday’s CM v Blackburn in which the Court of Appeal sidle up to the notion that the Supreme Court weren’t formulating new law in Re B, we now have the High Court in the form of Mostyn J just outright quibbling with their decision in Cheshire West.

 

In Rochdale v KW 2014 http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCOP/2014/45.html

 

Mostyn J was sitting in the Court of Protection and was faced with an application as to whether KW’s liberty was being deprived and if so ought the Court to sanction it.

  1. Katherine is aged 52. She is severely mentally incapacitated, to use the new language of the MCA; she is of “unsound mind” to use the old language of Article 5. She suffered brain damage while undergoing surgery to correct arteriovenous malformation in 1996[1], when aged only 34. This resulted in a subarachnoid haemorrhage and long term brain damage. She was left with cognitive and mental health problems, epilepsy and physical disability. She was discharged from hospital into a rehabilitation unit and thence to her own home, a bungalow in Middleton, with 24/7 support.
  2. In April 2013 Katherine was admitted to hospital. Her mental health had declined. In May 2013 she was transferred to a psychiatric ward, and later to another hospital. On 28 June 2013 she was discharged and transferred to a care home where she stayed until 14 April 2014, when she returned home. For appreciable periods between 28 June 2013 and 14 April 2014 Katherine’s confinement to the care home was not authorised under the terms of the MCA. On 26 June 2014 Katherine, acting by her litigation friend, made a claim for damages under Articles 5 and 8 of the Convention. On any view she had suffered an unlawful deprivation of liberty during those periods when her confinement was not authorised under the MCA. Her claim has been settled with modest compensation and a written apology. I approve the terms of the settlement.
  3. Physically, Katherine is just ambulant with the use of a wheeled Zimmer frame. Mentally, she is trapped in the past. She believes it is 1996 and that she is living at her old home with her three small children (who are now all adult). Her delusions are very powerful and she has a tendency to try to wander off in order to find her small children. Her present home is held under a tenancy from a Housing Association. The arrangement entails the presence of carers 24/7. They attend to her every need in an effort to make her life as normal as possible. If she tries to wander off she will be brought back. The weekly cost of the arrangement is £1,468.04. Of this £932.52 is paid by Rochdale and £535.52 by the local NHS Clinical Commissioning Group (“CCG”).

 

We have here therefore

(a) a person who lacks capacity

(b) a person who is being cared for by the State  (albeit in the setting of a foster ‘home’ rather than in residential care)

(c) a person who tries to leave that accommodation and when she tries is prevented from doing so, and if she gets out is brought back

 

On the basis of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Cheshire West, this appears to be a deprivation of liberty, but Mostyn J felt otherwise.

I find it impossible to conceive that the best interests arrangement for Katherine, in her own home, provided by an independent contractor, but devised and paid for by Rochdale and CCG, amounts to a deprivation of liberty within Article 5. If her family had money and had devised and paid for the very same arrangement this could not be a situation of deprivation of liberty. But because they are devised and paid for by organs of the state they are said so to be, and the whole panoply of authorisation and review required by Article 5 (and its explications) is brought into play. In my opinion this is arbitrary, arguably irrational, and a league away from the intentions of the framers of the Convention.

 

Mostyn J goes on to conduct a philosophical exercise on the nature of liberty  (I can highly recommend Alex Ruck’s blog on the judgment – he says everything that I wanted to say, and far more elegantly http://www.mentalcapacitylawandpolicy.org.uk/js-mill-strikes-back-mostyn-j-takes-on-the-supreme-court/)

 

It is plain that Mostyn J is aware that he is bound by Cheshire West, although making it plain that he doesn’t himself agree with the Supreme Court, but he attempts to distinguish the case (in ways that frankly, one might consider the Supreme Court had already ruled on), concluding that this particular issue needs to be looked at again by the Supreme Court and granting leave to appeal in order to facilitate that.

  1. The opinions of the majority are binding on me and I must loyally follow them even if I personally agree with the view of Parker J and the Court of Appeal in MIG and MEG; with the Court of Appeal in Cheshire West; and with the minority in the Supreme Court[2]. There is a similarity between this case and that of MIG inasmuch as both involve so called constraints on an incapacitated person living at home. In determining the factual question I cannot take into account the benign motives of Rochdale in providing the care arrangement or of Katherine’s contentment with it. Nor can I take into account the designed normality of the arrangement in Katherine’s own home.
  2. As I have shown, a key element of the objective test of confinement is whether the person is “free to leave”. This is part of the acid test. “Free to leave” does not just mean wandering out of the front door. It means “leaving in the sense of removing [herself] permanently in order to live where and with whom [she] chooses” (see JE v DE and Surrey County Council [2006] EWHC 3459 (Fam)[2007] 2 FLR 1150 per Munby J at para 115, implicitly approved in the Supreme Court at para 40). This is the required sense of the second part of the acid test.
  3. I do not find the test of the Strasbourg court in HL v United Kingdom 40 EHRR 761, at para 91, where it refers to the “concrete situation” of the protected person, as being of much assistance. The adjective “concrete” means that that I should look for an actual substance or thing rather than for an abstract quality. That is to state the obvious. Plainly, I will be looking only at Katherine’s actual personal circumstances and not at any abstractions.
  4. Katherine’s ambulatory functions are very poor and are deteriorating. Soon she may not have the motor skills to walk even with her frame. If she becomes house-bound or bed-ridden it must follow that her deprivation of liberty just dissolves. It is often said that one stress-tests a proposition with some more extreme facts. Imagine a man in hospital in a coma. Imagine that such a man has no relations demanding to take him away. Literally, he is not “free to leave”. Literally, he is under continuous supervision. Is he in a situation of deprivation of liberty? Surely not. So if Katherine cannot realistically leave in the sense described above then it must follow that the second part of the acid test is not satisfied.
  5. By contrast MIG was a young woman with full motor functions, notwithstanding her problems with her sight and hearing. She had the physical capacity to leave in the sense described. She had sufficient mental capacity to make the decision to leave, in the sense described. If she tried she would be stopped. Therefore, it can be seen that in her case both parts of the acid test was satisfied.
  6. In my judgment there is a very great difference between the underlying facts of MIG’s case and of this case notwithstanding that in both cases the protected person lives at home.
  7. It is my primary factual finding that in Katherine’s case the second part of the acid test is not satisfied. She is not in any realistic way being constrained from exercising the freedom to leave, in the required sense, for the essential reason that she does not have the physical or mental ability to exercise that freedom.
  8. I am not suggesting, of course, that it is impossible for a person ever to be deprived of his liberty by confinement in his or her own home. In the field of criminal law this happens all the time. Bail conditions, or the terms of a release from prison on licence, routinely provide for this. However, I am of the view that for the plenitude of cases such as this, where a person, often elderly, who is both physically and mentally disabled to a severe extent, is being looked after in her own home, and where the arrangements happen to be made, and paid for, by a local authority, rather than by the person’s own family and paid for from her own funds, or from funds provided by members of her family[3], Article 5 is simply not engaged.

 

 

For me, Alex Ruck puts it perfectly in his analysis

 

Mostyn J’s conception of freedom to leave is fundamentally predicated upon a concept that of liberty that is dependent upon a person’s ability to exercise that right, either themselves or by another. A person who is severely physically disabled – and therefore house-bound – could not, on Mostyn J’s analysis, be considered to be deprived of their liberty. It is, however, extremely difficult to square that analysis with the conclusion of Lady Hale (with whom Lord Kerr agreed) that liberty must mean the same for all, regardless of whether they are mentally or physically disabled (see the discussion at paragraphs 33-36).

 

We are once again getting back to a conflation of two questions – whether someone is deprived of their liberty, with whether it is justified. Katherine’s circumstances almost certainly make any deprivation justifiable, but to say that her liberty is not deprived as a result of her physical and mental difficulties is at right angles to the decision of the Supreme Court in Cheshire West.

 

We shall see what they say, if the case finally gets to them, but given how long we waited for Cheshire West to be resolved, the prospect of further doubt in this area is not appealing.

{I myself like to ‘stress-test’ deprivation of liberty cases by looking back to L and Bournewood – I’m not sure L would be helped by this sort of formulation}

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