Member

I close with the considerations of one of our country’s leading experts, who we heard at the Lords Select Committee. It was sobering evidence about the limits of clinical certainty in this area. Professor Martin Vernon told us that judging mental capacity can be extraordinarily difficult and at times impossible, particularly where illness, distress, medication and cognitive impairment interact. He emphasised that fluctuating capacity is not a rare case but extraordinarily common, yet this Bill relies heavily on assessments made at particular moments in time.