Dr. Norella Broderick:

I would echo what everybody has said about the human rights focus in the legislation and I think everybody here is in favour of it and would want to protect human rights. What we are advocating for is how we find the optimum balance between various different and almost competing rights at times, for example, the right to liberty and the right to autonomy sometimes versus the right to access care when needed. One issue in the legislation that has been raised as an area of concern among learning disability psychiatrists concerns the provisions on research. For example, the proposed Bill prohibits research with respect to any patient who is unable to consent, which I can understand in terms of the desire to protect people from exploitation in research. However, if we consider, for example, a person with a severe learning disability, who will never realistically have the capacity to consent, there is no way for research of any sort to be gathered with respect to such persons' needs, what they need to access healthcare and to know what treatments they need. The way this has been approached in the UK is that where it is in the person's interest, there is provision for that person to be allowed to take part in research. With the new capacity Act coming in where capacity can be supported, that might be a more helpful way of approaching the research issue. That is just one example of where we do not feel the balance has been correctly struck by this proposed legislation and we would argue for some tweaking of it if that makes sense.