If Janet Paraskeva spent as much time in the last fortnight reading the recent 23rd report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights as she did rehearsing the prevailing government's platitudes, she might reconsider her position in respect of the Mental Capacity Bill 2004 (see [2004] Gazette, 17 December, 10).


Among the human rights concerns highlighted in that report are those that relate to deprivations of liberty contrary to article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights; the lack of procedural safeguards arising out of the Bournewood gap suggested in the recent ruling in HL v UK (the Bournewood judgment, App 45508/99 5 October 2004); the defective safeguards on the requirements as to the form of advance directives; the failure of the government to clarify the position in relation to tube- (and spoon-) feeding qua 'treatment' since the controversial Bland decision (thus creating the danger of patients being starved to death in ignorance of the fact that such would be the effect of their treatment refusal); the failure of the Bill to deal with Leslie Burke-type situations where the patient requires rather than refuses the provision of tube and other feeding (triggering potential articles 2, 3, and 8 breaches); and the failure to ensure the modest safeguards on non-therapeutic research demanded by the latest Human Rights and Biomedicine Convention (which latter is widely criticised as a departure from the First Declaration of Helsinki, in any case).



Jacqueline Laing, London Metropolitan University