ENGLAND — The U.K. Supreme Court issued a judgment regarding deprivation of liberty safeguards, overturning the 2014 Cheshire West judgment. The new ruling establishes that a person lacking mental capacity will be considered to have consented to their care if they do not actively protest it, even if they are sedated or restrained.
The Cheshire West framework, which applied to individuals in care homes and hospitals unable to consent to treatment, medication, or restraint, was challenged in court by the U.K. Department of Health and Social Care and the Northern Ireland executive. These entities argued that the framework was legally flawed, unnecessary, and created an expensive administrative burden. The 2019 legislation passed by the U.K. parliament aimed to create a streamlined system called liberty protection safeguards.
Approximately 14,000 people in England and Wales held deprivation of liberty safeguards authorizations during the 2013-2014 period. This number increased to about 400,000 people in the 2023-2024 period. Each authorization requires an annual reassessment, costing over 500 pounds per review.
A spokesperson for the U.K. government said, "We respect the supreme court's decision on the meaning of deprivation of liberty. Our priority has always been safeguarding vulnerable people and ensuring their rights are protected. We will now consider the judgment carefully and its potential impacts and will set out guidance to the sector shortly."
Rashpal Bishop, vice-president of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, said, "The Dols system would in time focus on a smaller group of people who are likely to be unhappy with their care arrangements and are actively objecting to their placement, or where the restrictions are extreme and there is a need to provide the legal safeguards and the ability to challenge their detention."
Barrister Oliver Lewis said, "The judgment ignores decades of evidence from disability studies that some people, by reason of their disability, are more suggestible, more prone to persuasion, more vulnerable to institutionalisation, to normalising abuse and neglect."