Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)

In the context of this amendment, I meant it in a restricted category. I did not want to start withdrawing amendments and retabling them, because, in Committee, I think it is useful to explore such issues. I am not sure for anyone reading the Marshalled List on the outside—for any who do—that it is terribly helpful to see that amendments have been withdrawn. It has been a really useful discussion to have in Committee. I thank my noble friend Lady Cass for raising the issue of remembering information, and I thank my noble friend Lady Finlay of Llandaff for bringing in a sporting analogy. I was thinking about the work that I do outside this Bill, and over the years I have done a lot of work on concussion protocols. In the early years, when concussion protocols in sport were brought in to help make sure that people did not carry on playing rugby or other sports while concussed, there was a lot of coaching going on because the same questions were asked through the concussion protocols: do you know what day it is?; do you know who the monarch is? The answers were learned. In that moment, people might not have been able to answer the question but they had learned the answers. The point raised by my noble friend Lady Cass is something else that we need to think clearly about. Another area I work in is anti-doping in sports. We now have a new system. It used to be that the governing body of the sport would take tests from the athletes and then, if there was an adverse finding, do the policing on that. An independent system, UK Anti-Doping, was purposely developed so that the governing body could, if there was an adverse finding at the first or second stage, guide an athlete through really complex processes. This is just anti-doping in sport, and the athletes are educated about it at least every year, but if even something such as anti-doping in sport is hard to understand—between what is written in a document and what happens when you are in the process—assisted suicide probably deserves a bit more. I am not convinced by the amendment tabled by the noble and learned Lord. I still do not think it provides enough of a safeguard. I would be interested in being able to tie up what the noble and learned Lord said in the Chamber and then coming back with some stronger amendments. This is in the context that statutory advocacy is generally of quite poor quality. Less than 15% of people get advocates in other areas when they need them. If you look at advocacy in general, it is worrying that there is no central data collection for advocacy under the Mental Capacity Act. In 2019, a freedom of information request which looked at this area found that 51 out of 139 local authorities did not collect data on IMCA support. There is still limited data on Care Act advocacy. The CQC said that, for Care Act safeguarding, where there is a duty to appoint an independent advocate, in England in 2025 some 83.38% of those lacking capacity had an advocate appointed. To pick some random counties, in Derbyshire, the figure was 14.38%; in County Durham, it was 32.64%; and in Liverpool, it was 53%. Where there is a duty to appoint one and the figures are so low, I wonder whether the take-up in this space would be very limited. I still do not think that we have the right balance between accessing the process and safeguarding, but at this stage I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.