The Witchfinder summarises the evidence from the recent House of Lords Committee on the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and points the finger at the Labour politicians responsible for this travesty.

Labour must take responsibility for the immense human suffering caused by the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (Picture licensed from Dreamstime)

The Witchfinder, under another name, was one of many individuals, professionals and organisations that gave evidence to the ongoing investigation. The evidence has now been published and your humble inquisitor has decided to summarise.

Anyone wishing to read it for themselves can find volumes 1 and 2 on the parliament website –

Volume 1
Volume 2

What is striking is just how loud the chorus of complaints are. Chris Booker of the Telegraph, for example, would be delighted to discover just how many social workers are in total agreement with him about the Act’s inadequacies.

The problem with dry text is the inability to fully convey the human suffering represented by the endless storm of criticism. I quote (for example) Kate Beynon, a social worker in Northamptonshire, “I was involved in a recent CoP case and am very worried that one of the parties was not able to access legal aid, she was in debt and could not afford repayments and yet we were removing her adult son from her care.”

Beynon is quite right – a lot of the Witchfinder’s charity work exists solely because there is negligible legal aid available to families when social services take away adult relatives.

She goes on to mirror the Witchfinder’s suggestion that there be local Mental Capacity tribunals instead of the current Court of Protection, “Why can we not have local Tribunals similar to Mental Health Tribunals?”

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