Mental Capacity Act 2005

A breath-taking extension of the Hyper-injunction.

April 19, 2011
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Historically, the Court of Protection ‘protected the purse, not the person’. The Mental Capacity Act of 2005 dramatically extended the remit of the court to include the ability to ‘protect the person’ as well – from October 2007 they were able to make decisions regarding, for instance, where a person lived, what medical treatment they [...]

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Hurrah for Common Sense!

December 21, 2010

Mr Justice Mostyn sitting on the last day before the Christmas vacation has just decided that Steven Neary shall be returned to his Father permanently in time for Christmas. Steven, a 20 year old autistic man, has been deprived of his liberty for exactly a year, without charge, without evidence of mental illness; but after [...]

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Steven Neary – Update.

December 20, 2010

The past few days has seen the Blogosphere, and much of the mainstream media, consumed with the outrage of an Australian citizen, locked up without charge, without evidence of madness, in Wandsworth Gaol. Julian Assange. Google returns a stunning 832,000,000 posts on the subject just in the last nine days. Compare this with the interest [...]

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The Orwellian Present – Never Mind the Future. Court of Protection.

December 6, 2010

‘Just off the coast of Autonomy, across the Bay of Good Intentions, lies the fog shrouded Isle of Best Interests’. If you have arrived at this blog today looked for cheer and sympathy for your woes – snow bound, central heating boiler broken down, redundancy imminent, then I am sorry for you – but you [...]

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The Gold Standard for an Obscene Death.

September 3, 2009

There is a sense in which publication of this letter in the Daily Telegraph was as inevitable as death itself. I have been waiting for it, or something like it,  to appear since last October when the full function of The Mental Capacity Act 2005 came into operation. None of us want to think of [...]

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