N v ACCG

Summary[1]

The Supreme Court has now pronounced definitively upon what the Court of Protection should do where is a dispute between the providers or funders of health or social services for a person lacking the capacity to make the decision for himself as to what services should be provided to him either between the person's family or, by analogy, by those acting on behalf of the person.

The facts

The appeal arose from the decision taken in 2013 in relation to a young man, MN, with profound disabilities who lacked capacity to make decisions about his care. He was made the subject of a care order when he was 8 years old and placed in residential accommodation. On turning 18, he was moved to an adult residential placement and the clinical commissioning group took over funding for his placement, the local authority remaining involved in the proceedings. MN's parents accepted that he should live at the placement for the time being, but wished to assist in providing intimate care to MN at the placement, and to have contact with MN at their home.  The CCG did not agree that intimate care should be provided, and was not willing to provide the necessary funding for additional carers to facilitate home contact. At first instance, MN's parents contended that the court should nevertheless determine MN's best interests in respect of both matters. The local authority and the CCG submitted that the court was only able to choose between available options.

At first instance, Eleanor King J held that the court should not embark upon a best interests analysis of hypothetical possibilities in relation to home contact and that it would be only in exceptional cases that an argument founded on the Human Rights Act 1998 would require the court to consider options that were not available. Both parents appealed to the Court of Appeal, which upheld Eleanor King's judgment. Mr N appealed to the Supreme Court, and was supported in his appeal by Mrs N.  The CCG and the Official Solicitor, on behalf of MN, sought to uphold the decision of the Court of Appeal.

The issue

Lady Hale, giving the sole judgment of the Supreme Court, considered that the true issue was not the jurisdiction of the Court of Protection (as it had been put by both Eleanor King J and Sir James Munby P in the Court of Appeal), but rather the approach it should take in light of its limited powers.

The proper approach to the determination of the issue

As she had done in Aintree v James, Lady Hale took matters back to first principles, by reference to the legislative history of the MCA (and, indeed, its pre-history, including – in essence – a potted narrative of the development of the doctrine of necessity and its ultimate codification).   She is, of course, uniquely placed to do so, given her role at the Law Commission in the 1990s in the formulation of what ultimately became the MCA 2005.   For present purposes, the most important points to be drawn from that history are the following:

1. Lady Hale's emphasis that the jurisdiction of the Court of Protection is limited to decisions that a person is unable to take for himself. There is no such thing as a care order for adults and the jurisdiction is not to be equated with the jurisdiction of family courts under the Children Act 1989 or the wardship jurisdiction of the High Court (para 24). By reference to the wording of s.16 MCA 2005, unlike the Children Act 1989 the MCA 2005 does not contemplate the grant of "the full gamut of decision-making power, let alone parental responsibility, over an adult who lacks capacity" (para 27);
2. Lady Hale's 'respectful' agreement (at para 26) with the observations of Sir James Munby P in the Court of Appeal that, unless the desired order clearly falls within the ambit of s.15 (i.e. a declaration as to capacity and/or lawfulness, which may have a narrower ambit than can be made in the High Court), orders are better framed in terms of relief under s.16 MCA 2005. As she noted, an order under s.16(2)(a) simply makes the decision on behalf of the person, with no need to declare that the decision made is in P's best interests;
3. The weight placed by Lady Hale upon the fact that s.17 MCA 2005 – giving examples of the powers under s.16 as respects P's personal welfare – did not extend to such matters as deciding that a named care home must accommodate P or that a person providing healthcare must provide a particular treatment for P was consistent with (1) the original Law Commission report in 1995, which provided that the role of the court it envisaged was to stand in the shoes of the person concerned, but that, if that person had no power under the community care legislation to demand the provision of particular services, then neither could the court on their behalf; (2) the approach then adopted in the Government's White Paper preceding the then-Mental Incapacity Bill; and (3) the approach laid down by the Supreme Court itself in Aintree v James (paras 29-32); and
4. Lady Hale's conclusion that courts and people taking decisions on behalf of those who lack capacity to do so have to do so in their best interests, and, following s.4 MCA 2005, a conclusion as to what is in a person's best interests "is a decision about what would be best for this particular individual, taking into account, so far as practicable, his individual characteristics, likes and dislikes, values and approach to life" (para 34).In light of the analysis above, and the limited powers of the court, Lady Hale noted (at para 39) that where a case is brought to court:
5. How, then, should the court reconcile its duty to decide what is in the best interests of the person with the fact that it only had the power to take a decision that P himself could have taken? As Lady Hale made clear (para 35) this meant that it had to choose between the available options, and its powers were (in this respect) similar to the family court's powers in relation to children, as the House of Lords had previously explained in Holmes-Moorhouse v Richmond upon Thames Borough Council [2009] UKHL 7.   As Lady Hale outlined (at para 37), service-providing powers and duties – including those under the Care Act 2014 (not relevant in MN's case, but relevant in many others) – have their own principles and criteria which do not depend upon what is best for the service user, although such would no doubt be a relevant consideration.  She noted, in particular, that whilst decisions on health or social care services may engage the right to respect for private (or family) life under Article 8 ECHR, decisions about the allocation of limited resources may well be justified as necessary in the interests of the economic well-being.

Lady Hale outlined the extensive case management powers of the Court of Protection, noting (at para 41) that the court was therefore clearly entitled to take the view that no useful purpose would be served by holding a hearing to resolve a particular issue.   She continued:

In reaching such a decision, many factors might be relevant. In a case such as this, for example: the nature of the issues; their importance for MN; the cogency of the parents' demands; the reasons why the CCG opposed those demands and their cogency; any relevant and indisputable fact in the history; the views of MN's litigation friend; the consequence of further investigation in terms of costs and court time; the likelihood that it might bring about further modifications to the care plan or consensus between the parties; and generally whether further investigation would serve any useful purpose.

Lady Hale concluded that, on the facts of the case before Eleanor King J, consideration upon the lines set out immediately above would have led to the conclusion that it was unlikely that investigation would bring about further modifications or consensus and that it would have been disproportionate to devote any more of the court's scarce resources to resolve matters. As she put it at para 44, this was "a case in which the court did not have power to order the CCG to fund what the parents wanted. Nor did it have power to order the actual care providers to do that which they were unwilling or unable to do. In those circumstances, the court was entitled to conclude that, in the exercise of its case management powers, no useful purpose would be served by continuing the hearing." Lady Hale accepted that Eleanor King J had not put matters in quite those terms, but that was the substance of what she was doing and she was entitled in the circumstances to do so, such that the appeal fell to be dismissed.

It is important to note, however, that, as Lady Hale emphasised at para 43:

Case management along these lines does not mean that a care provider or funder can pre-empt the court's proceedings by refusing to contemplate changes to the care plan. The court can always ask itself what useful purpose continuing the proceedings, or taking a particular step in them, will serve but that is for the court, not the parties, to decide.

Comment

This decision puts beyond doubt the limits of both the Court of Protection and, more broadly, what can be done in the name of best interests. As Lady Hale has made so starkly clear, a decision as to what is in the person's best interests is a choice between available options.  This means in practice, and all too, often a constrained choice where a person is wholly or partially reliant upon public funding to meet their care needs.  However, Lady Hale made clear that the approach that she was setting out was one that had always been intended from the very earliest work of the Law Commission.

Many people may regret this decision as the "hollowing out" of the concept of best interests, as Beverley Clough memorably put it in a post prior to the hearing. Further, some may contend that the result is inconsistent with the CRPD, which had a cameo role in the hearing.  However, for our part, we would suggest that our energies should be devoted more to ensuring that those mechanisms which exist to facilitate the involvement of those with impaired capacity in service provision decisions made for them under the relevant legislation (for instance advocacy under the Care Act) are made meaningful.  This is an area where real supports are required for the exercise of legal capacity under Article 12 CRPD (and also to make real the right to independent living under Article 19).

As regards the role of the Court of Protection, it is now clear beyond peradventure that the court should be in the driving seat as regards the management of cases that come before it, and we hope also that this judgment fortifies the court in taking the robust case management steps set down in the Case Management Pilot. We will certainly not be changing our advice that any person, and in particular any public body, appearing before the court can expect to have their decision-making probed robustly, especially where the consequences of those decisions are such as to remove from the table options which it is clear P would wish to be able to choose.

The Supreme Court did not comment upon whether the Court of Protection is able to hear claims brought under s.7 Human Rights Act 1998; both Eleanor King J and the Court of Appeal had held that, exceptionally, the court is able to consider a claim that a public body is acting unlawfully in the steps that it is taking towards P by reference to the ECHR, and we suggest that the Supreme Court's silence on this point should be taken as endorsement of this position. We note that this is different to the question of whether the Court of Protection should be able to make declarations and/or damages to reflect a public body's past actions breach the ECHR – there is no doubt that the court has the jurisdiction to do this, but, as is becoming increasingly clear the approach of the LAA, in particular, would seem to suggest that the much better course of action will normally be to bring separate proceedings in the county or High Courts.

We note, finally, Lady Hale's observations at para 38 as to the limits of s.5 MCA 2005. It is no little interest in light of the rumbling issue Alex has discussed elsewhere as to when judicial sanction is required before steps can be taken by public authorities that Lady Hale clearly takes an expansive view of s.5.

Section 5 of the 2005 Act gives a general authority, to act in relation to the care or treatment of P, to those caring for him who reasonably believe both that P lacks capacity in relation to the matter and that it will be in P's best interests for the act to be done. This will usually suffice, unless the decision is so serious that the court itself has said it must be taken to court. But if there is a dispute (or if what is to be done amounts to a deprivation of liberty for which there is no authorisation under the deprivation of liberty safeguards in the 2005 Act) then it may be necessary to bring the case to court, as the authorities did in this case.

If the Law Commission recommendations are taken forward, then this "general authority" (a phrase which harks very much back to the wording of the original 1995 report) would be significantly constrained in any case involving significant interference with the Article 8 rights of the individual. For our part, though, we consider that the issues at the heart of MN's case would always require resolution by the court – albeit we would sincerely hope at very much greater speed.

[1] This draws upon a post written for the Court of Protection Handbook website by Alex, Neil and Sophy Miles, respectively junior counsel for the Official Solicitor, Mr N and Mrs N before the Supreme Court.