Member

We really need absolute clarity as to how these processes must operate. Can the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, explain how doctors and the panels could operate safely without seeing the patient? The psychiatrists have said that they cannot assess capacity remotely. The limitations of remote assessment in the justice and healthcare system are well-known. How is the panel to verify matters if it does not see the patient, at least in most cases? Can the noble and learned Lord explain what safeguards exist to stop the panel becoming, as Sir Nicholas Mostyn said, a “symbolic rubber stamp”?