Mr. John Dunne:

I am enough of an optimist to think that in ten years' time it may not be a problem because the families concerned will be registered as decision-making representatives. They will be doing returns. The system will be experienced in how to deal with this. At the moment, the codes of practice are almost academic exercises. Frankly, I find them hard to read because at one level, they are not detailed enough to be technically useful, while at another level people are saying they are too cumbersome and complicated. I would not like to be the person trying to draw them up. In ten years' time, however, we will have a decade of lived experience of it, so all of that will probably be less intimidating than it is currently.

We are just looking at the hypothetical situation that this legislation is all about vindicating the rights of people to live to the maximum of their ability and, indeed, to recognise and maximise their opportunity to exercise their will and preference. Nobody is contesting that. The question is where that leaves the families. For five years, there has been overwhelming silence in terms of the engagement around that. When we have raised questions, we have not got answers. Sometimes we have received quite preposterous responses along the lines of, "Do not worry about it; it will be all right", which is not much in the way of consolation. We have asked specific questions on the ten-year timeframe and the issue of restraint. That is not a trivial change to the original legislation. I have no issue with it being put on the table as a change or losing an argument about whether it should be in the legislation. I have a profound issue with the fact that people were talking about it for some part of the past five years but never saw fit to ask whether it would have any effect on families.